[Web4lib] The Wikipedia Galactia

Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 18 23:30:09 EST 2007


There is no Wikipedia heading for this because it would be considered
"Original Research" and Original Research is banned from Wikipedia.

Alain Vaillancourt

--- Marion Sumerianlibrarian <marionsumerianlibrarian at yahoo.com> a
écrit :

> under what wikipedia heading would this entry appear?
> 
> --- "Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt" <ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Yes, the short head and long tail is an interesting
> > way of putting it,
> > but it's a bit more complicated.
> > 
> > For one, there is an overabundance of science and
> > technical (computer
> > programming mostly) in the short head, to the point
> > that it overflows
> > into the "torso".
> > 
> > Then, there's the fact that the long tail is not
> > really a tail, since
> > it is not true that one can write any article on any
> > kind of obscure
> > topic any time.  Even the obscure articles are
> > patrolled for
> > "notability".  It doesn't always work, but it means
> > that there is
> > actually no precise tail forming and it's hard to
> > tell apart an
> > "obscure" article on a nearly unknown 19th century
> > author with
> > absolutely no importance from an extremely scholarly
> > one dealing with
> > specialized topics in History or Artisan crafts.  Or
> > it might be the
> > other way around with insignificant crafts and ,
> > since unlike a tail
> > there's no precise end or beginning.
> > 
> > There certainly are Wikipedia "editors" who could be
> > called zealots but
> > you can't lump them all in one group of zealots. 
> > Also there,s a
> > question of zeal and Faith and there's also a
> > question of Order and
> > Beauty. For you they are etiquette-mad.  For other
> > groups, such as Web
> > comics artists who have had rotten experiences with
> > the "bad editors"
> > at Wikipedia those regulars are anal-retentive sorts
> > who want to put
> > everything on catalog cards and then find joy in
> > sorting them.  They
> > never use the words "frustrated librarians" to
> > describe those "bad
> > editor" cliques at Wikipedia but all the stereotypes
> > are there.
> > 
> > You see zealots, possessed with Faith, and ignorant
> > of Truth and they,
> > (the foiled Web comics creators) see frustrated
> > monomaniacs who are
> > more interested in a petty ordering of their chosen
> > limited knowledge
> > than in reporting on Art and Beauty.  The bad guys
> > deleted their Web
> > comics articles you see, and when a few of them
> > fought back using
> > Wikipedia rules, the Order-mad "bad-editors"
> > (cousins to the etiquette
> > zealots most probably) started attacking (with the
> > deletion process)
> > many other articles surrounding Web comics, like the
> > Oni Press article,
> > in a show of petty vindictive actions.
> > 
> > Gentlemen (and ladies) we are not dealing with a
> > mammal here, but with
> > a giant amoeba, with no easily discernible head or
> > tail and with a rich
> > symbiotic mass of life within its body.  It's a
> > social animal, but not
> > the kind who's going to lick your fingers when you
> > come home or go into
> > the barn.
> > 
> > Alain Vaillancourt


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Courriel vous offre la meilleure protection possible contre les messages non nollicités 
http://mail.yahoo.ca Yahoo! Courriel  


More information about the Web4lib mailing list