On 2/26/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
T P wrote:
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I
had an argument with someone
who
wanted to include some loosely related material
because it "related [the
subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to
"sell" a
topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia
because
they are already interested in the subject,
it's not like a magazine
where
you come across the topic randomly.
Yeah, but I have a feeling we're heading in a direction where we're
going to begin failing at this. Part of Wikipedia's awesomeness (and
why I started contributing originally) was because...
a) Wikipedia probably has an article on what you're looking for.
b) If Wikipedia doesn't have an article on what you're looking for, you
can probably make it.
If we lose that, we lose our audience. Long tail, or something.
This was a featured article. Which passed.
One of the unusual characteristics of Wikipedia is that, as a volunteer
effort, articles are primarily written to satisfy the needs of the writers,
not the readers. Where those needs overlap (and usually they do) everything
is fine. But a lot of problems come up when they don't.
Adam