[Web4lib] The battle for Wikipedia's soul - The Economist on the future of Wikipedia

[Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt]

This is by far the best article I've read on Wikipedia in several
years.  It touches all the problem spots, perfectly.

I can't agree more with this:

"These rules are used to devise official policies on particular
subjects, such as the notability of pornographic stars (a Playboy
appearance earns you a Wikipedia mention; starring in a low-budget
movie does not) or ..."

These notability "rules" (which are interpreted every which way) are
what stops Wikipedia from reflecting the work of independent artists. 
This means artists whose work is directly on the Web as well as off it.
The work of the "deletionists" around the whole topic of web comics is
an extremely visible case for this.  A few years back you had articles
on just about every Web comic existing.  Now the pendulum has swung in
the other direction and it's nearly impossible to put an article on a
Web comic in there.

The sad thing is that the work of the deletionists is not focused in a
general way on maintaining a good level of quality or "notability" on
all types of articles .  It's focused instead on a limited set of
popular topics, or "dangerous" political topics.

Alain Vaillancourt

--- "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com> a écrit :

>  
>  
>
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354
>    
>   An excerpt:
>    
>   "Wikipedia is facing an identity crisis...It can either strive to
> encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or
> it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on
> trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation
> as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting
> visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia
> between 'inclusionists', who believe that applying strict editorial
> criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and
> 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and
> selective about its entries."
>    
>   Bernie Sloan
> 
>        
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