[Wikipedia-l] Re: Years in review and the need for editorial judgement

Robert Graham Merkel rgmerk at mira.net
Fri Jun 28 16:25:25 UTC 2002


On Fri, 28 Jun 2002 20:20:51 Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
> "Jan.Hidders" wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 04:11:28PM +1000, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> > >
> > > I agree that [[List of Books Published in 1962]] and its ilk are
> > > completely appropriate.  What I am concerned about is maintaining the
> > > integrity of the year in review pages in the process by keeping them
> a)
> > > short and thus useful, and b) ensuring that only really important
> stuff
> > > gets on there as we build content so that we keep the integrity of
> the
> > > pages as a reference *now*.
> >
> > How about the following:
> >
> > - We make a guideline that says that there should be no more than, say,
> 10
> >   births / deaths / events on the page and that these should be the
> most
> >   important ones in that year.
> >
> > - We give some hints on what might be considered important and what
> not.
> >
> > - If someone comes along and thinks a very important event is missing
> but
> >   the list is already full then he or she has to remove the least
> important
> >   one.
> >
> > Of course this will generate some debates but that is inherent in the
> nature
> > of Wikpedia and these types of pages.
> 
> I STRONGLY disagree with this. Who's going to judge what is more
> 'important' or what to delete? I don't think it's a big deal to have
> books listed or movies or anything... when the page gets too lengthy
> then it can be broken up. Then we'll have a ready-made list for a
> subpage. Of course if you really want to keep them off the year pages
> what you need to do is to make a template for a 'Published/Produced in
> this year' page for people to put them on... the wikipedia's supposed to
> be about completeness after all!
> 

Firstly, as I already agreed, it's entirely reasonable to have
a complete list of "people who have an entry in Wikipedia who died in 1976"
or "books in Wikipedia first published in 1976".  My point refers 
specifically
to keeping the main "year in review" pages useful by being a) short enough
to read quickly, and b) reflect the actually important things that happened
in that year in the area concerned.

If we let people add stuff willy-nilly, you will end up with people 
listing the
fact that series 2 of "Walker: Texas Ranger" first screened in the US in 
1994 to
the [[1994]] page (if you don't know what that is, be very grateful and 
just rest
assured that there are approximately 27,543 things that happened in the 
telvision world
in 1994 that were more important).  Now, two things might then happen.  We 
might
already have, or build up a list of lots of things that happened in 
television in
1994, and after discussion decide that, indeed, Chuck Norris and his 
buddies second
series wasn't really that important.  That might cause a bunfight, but the 
reason
for the removal is at least clear.

A more tricky situation, however, is the case where there *aren't* 
immediately things there
replacing it.  Now, having an entry for that (and entries in 1993, 1995, 
1996, 1997, 1998,
1999, 2000, and 2001 for series 1 through 9), even if there aren't 
sufficient entries
on "television" for it to be causing length problems, is giving a totally 
misleading
indication of the significance of the events.

If you want a more realistic scenario, think popular music and a bunch of 
fans of
some particular musical genre discovering the 'pedia.

Without some guidelines, there's nothing stopping them adding a bunch of 
listings
of events interesting only to a small subculture, and no justification for 
people
to delete the entries (or, as you point out, move them to a [[List of Acid 
Jazz Albums
Released in 1993]] page). 
I don't have all the answers yet on exactly *what* guidelines we'll come 
up with
yet, but I'm convinced that we need some.  As others have pointed out, this
is one of the few places in wikipedia where we are space-limited, and we 
need
some extra smarts to deal with it IMHO.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Go You Big Red Fire Engine
-- Unknown Audience Member at Adam Hills standup gig
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