[Wikipedia-l] RE: Current events

[Ray Saintonge]

Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 08:25 PM 3/16/03 +0100, Pedro wrote:
>
>> I think this would be an attention ( 
>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pages_needing_attention) 
>> principle : first the nowadays articles ( topics in the news).
>>
>> For me, the attention principles would be :
>>
>> 1. General before particular ( specific ).
>> 2. In the news topics before another ones ( this is over the 1st. 
>> principle, if necessary).
>
>
> As a practical matter, lots of people are already doing this, but the 
> other significant
> factor is that people will write about what they know and care about. 
> Once in a while
> someone like me will take an hour to do online research for a quick 
> article on
> something in the news (for example, I did a quick bio of the VP of 
> Venezuela when
> he was briefly acting president), but I'm not suddenly an expert on 
> the history or
> geography of Iraq.
>
> The beauty of Wikipedia is that it has room for people to follow lots 
> of different
> interests, and sometimes that means that when something hits the news, 
> the
> article is already there, written by someone who cared about that 
> enough to
> write about it instead of about whatever was in the headlines that week. 

I support the sentiments in Vicki's observation.  If most of us ran our 
personal lives in the way we choose what to edit on Wikipedia we would 
all be in serious trouble.  "Always leave something undone" is a 
principle that works well in Wikipedia but not in one's personal life. 
 I've consistently believed that there was a fractal component to 
Wikipedia participation where all these seemingly random contributions 
when viewed as a whole show evidence of some unifying pattern.

In an ideal world where our human resources are unlimited I would 
support Sheldon's proposal, but in our real world my support must 
remanin philosophical.  Each Wikipedia project competes with the others 
(including those in other languages) for human resources.  Whenever that 
happens each of us must make a decision about the allocation of the 
fixed number of hours that we have available.  This can be easy when we 
know nothing about the language of a new Wikipedia, or difficult when a 
new project relates significantly to our personal interests.  From my 
own perspective, I can only wish that Sheldon's new little Mendelbrot of 
current events will some day find the appropriate connection with the 
central structure.

Eclecticology