[Wikipedia-l] The nature of a Wikipedia article (Was: Please help test new features)

[Toby Bartels]

Erik Moeller wrote in part:

>Stub sections are evil. They are a form of meta comment like "is this
>really true?" insertions in articles and should be avoided whenever
>possible. Wiki is a means to an end, not an end in itself -- Wikipedia is
>first and foremost an encyclopedia, not a scratchpad. If you want to talk
>about an article's potential future structure, use the talk page.

One of the poorest developements that I've seen in Wikipedia
over the course of the past year that I've spent here
is that people are abandoning the notion that Wikipedia articles
are, by their very nature, always and inherently works in progress.
Comments hidden away on the talk page or inside the HTML code
are useful to me only once I decide to work on it --
they do nothing to encourage me to start working in the first place.


-- Toby