On 6/12/2011 4:02 a.m., Fred Bauder wrote:
I can quite
see why people do think Wikipedia "Byzantine", which is the
basic message of what we are talking about. Probably trainee medics curse
the immune system as unreasonably complicated. The metaphor doesn't seem
to
me either too defensive or too stretched. I think we should bear in mind
that more and better written "manual pages" would only work better if
people had the basic humility to read instructions, at least in the
context
of complex systems they don't understand.
Charles
On IRC last night I was trying to explain to someone how to put sources
into their own words, quite impossible; we do things that are hard and
that cannot be expressed in simple understandable rules. Tying to
determine notability is one of those things.
In this particular case the person is notable within a small but highly
significant community which makes determination difficult.
The complaint that Wikipedia is "closed and unfriendly" is false. Many
people responded to the blog posting and we do have procedures to deal
with the questions raised. Not that the blogger will get their way;
nobody gets that consistently.
Fred
WP may on occasion be an unfriendly experience but it is far from
closed. The ease of being able to make edits is well known, which is
why we are continually getting rid of spam, vandalism, non-notable info,
and trying to maintain balance within articles. But on the other hand,
as Fred points out, it is hard editing WP since it has become a complex,
bureaucratic behemoth. That is not a criticism - in order to develop
and improve the project we need all manner of policy, guidelines, MOS,
etc and we have to interact with other editors (of varying expertise
about wikis and about the subject material).
Alan