On 8/12/02 9:05 AM, "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
"Current events is not a news page. We shouldn't be in the business of writing articles about breaking news stories, unless indeed we can be very confident, as in the case of the September 11 attacks, that in the future there will be a significant call for an encyclopedia article on that topic. One very significant danger is that news articles must be kept current in order to remain accurate. Wikipedians might begin a news article and then simply lose interest in the topic, whereupon the article becomes inaccurate. In short, we aren't set up to be an amateur news organization, and we shouldn't try to compete with professional news organizations."
In this case the significance of the stock market downturn is not yet determined; the invasion may not happen at all but is sure to be significant when it does. It is pretty clear that an article that does doesn't attract participation is a loser. If an article does attact significant participation it provides a record of contemporary views of the event.
That's one opinion. Mine is different.