--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
I think the point is that yes, we can include everything into wikipedia, but then we'll have
- normal people bored and scared away by a flood of dull data
- scientists (who are to be considered borderline-normal people;-)
taking their field so seriously that they'll simply refuse to work on an article about cats that links to [[catwoman]]
This is already taken care of through the use of summaries linked to more detailed articles on the topic. For example all the [[Geology of ...]] articles I've been created for geographic areas. There is *no* reason why [[Biology of ...]] articles cannot also be created and in fact there are already many [[evolution of ...]] articles.
The proposed solution therefore is
- let normal people have their encyclopedia article, with an "in-house"
link to the dull, boring flood of data at wikispecies
As Jimbo's example clearly shows it is not just data but prose as well. This detail should be in Wikipedia. If any part of an article is too detailed, then it should be summarized and spun off into a daughter article. This is done all the time and is the natural way to deal with our differing audiences.
- let scientists work on the cool, exciting data at wikispecies, amongst
their own where they are comfortable, and provide a link to the "other stuff" at wikipedia
Draw scientists away from Wikipedia you mean.
-- mav
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