charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com wrote:
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote
If forcing people to write
down what they read to get the information drives people away there's
something wrong with their attitude.
Sure. And wiki can't possibly work.
This takes us absolutely back to basics. Wiki is about lowering the barriers to entry,
right to the ground. I'm not a 'purist' - I don't say that every way in
which WP practice differs from wiki theory is a blemish - but I do recognise a cost
attached.
There must be something wrong with _our_ attitude if RS policy is both so contentious
(see another thread) and required to define where we set the bar for entry-level editing,
rather than post-moderation. Not in fact a simple matter: someone writes here based on
something from a blog, and they will not have a good time.
As Gmaxwell pointed out, WP is not the Internet - we've already got one
of those. Readers aren't going to value a WP that is no better than the
random drivel they'll find doing [[Special:Random]] on the whole net;
they want a resource that is at least a little smarter or more
knowledgeable than themselves. So the bar has to be a little higher in
some way. I see the wiki process as lowering unhelpful technical
barriers - a student with a spare moment can fix a simple grammatical
error just as easily as a high-paid professional - but that means we
have to consciously adopt policies that will counteract exploitation of
the low bar, such as libels in bios.
I wonder if one of the disconnects might be that older folks remember
the educational system of their youth, and assume that anyone past the
age of 12 "just knows" to cite their sources when writing nonfiction. My
own impression is that the whole concept of citation is not being taught
or enforced anymore, and there is now a generation perfectly happy to
play at being their own "authorities", and who get irate when anybody
questions the validity of whatever they happen to write down.
Stan