[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedic"

Sat Mar 20 22:27:10 UTC 2004

Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:

> [snippages]
>
>> the original poster was adding off-the-cuff pizza places that, at 
>> least as far as was indicated in the article, had no particular 
>> significance except possibly to the poster.
>> RickK
>>
>> "John C. Penta" <pentaj2 at UofS.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I think the whole idea of 'encyclopedic'-ness is becoming a barrier 
>> to Wikipedia.
>>
>> I have to agree with Erik; include these places. For those who know 
>> the Jersey Shore, imagine an article on the area _without_ including 
>> something on the Stone Pony. I live here...Not including the Stone 
>> Pony would leave a gaping hole. Not including the Hilltop Steakhouse 
>> in a similar article on Boston would be similar.
>>
>> Yeah, you'd get all the facts, but you'd miss a lot of the character.
>
>
> I plead guilty to personal inconsistency on this. ("I am large, I 
> contain multitudes...") I thought RickK was right about the inclusion 
> of Sally's Apizza and Pepe's Pizza. On the other hand, some time ago 
> Angela slapped me _very, very_ gently on the wrist for mentioning by 
> name all two of the lodging options available in Lancaster, Wisconsin 
> (population 4070); the specific sentence was "Lancaster accommodations 
> include the Best Western Welcome Inn (608-723-4162) and the lovely 
> Maple-Harris Bed and Breakfast 608-723-4717, 888-216-0888." Well, the 
> Best Western is fine, but the Maple-Harris _is_ lovely. (Anyway, we 
> settled for replacing the sentence with external links to the lodging 
> sections of the City of Lancaster website)
>
> Clearly, certain kinds of articles, particularly those about towns and 
> universities (and university towns!) tend to acquire a certain 
> "community" flavor. Obviously this is because the people most likely 
> to contribute are present/former residents/students, who have an 
> emotional attachment to the place. Equally obviously, the mention of 
> specific commercial establishments is apt to be perceived as 
> "advertising" by outsiders, whereas in many cases the motivation for 
> placement is just affection for the establishment. I certainly do not 
> have any business connection with Maple-Harris, for example.
>
> Of course, the problem is that merely mentioning an establishment may 
> be evocative of local color to people that know the town, but doesn't 
> do much for outsiders. It's true that I'm not a proper judge of 
> whether Sally's Apizza is "encyclopedic" or not. But unfortunately 
> it's equally true that mentioning it in an article on New Haven 
> doesn't do a thing to convey anything about New Haven to me.
>
> So... what we probably have here in the New Haven article is people 
> from New Haven writing things about New Haven that are mostly to be 
> appreciated by people _from_ New Haven. Which is probably why this 
> sort of thing is faintly annoying to outsiders.
>
> (By the way, for the record, the current article on Boston does _not_ 
> mention the Hilltop Steakhouse. Nor Jake Wirth's, nor the Union Oyster 
> House, nor Durgin-Park, nor the much-missed Jack and Marion's in 
> Brookline, home of the Empire State Skyscraper Sandwich... Ah, Jack 
> and Marion's... What care I about lunch counters and pizza joints in 
> New Haven,  Jack and Marion's was a cultural icon of the first water. 
> Say, get this--their menu, well, see, it had these red stars next to 
> certain items and when you tried to figure out what it meant and 
> looked at the bottom of the menu, it said "Red star indicates good 
> profit item for Jack and Marion's--please order!" Yes, indeed, Jack 
> and Marion's is surely worthy of an entire Wikipedia article of its 
> own, perhaps two... but I digress. Or do I?)
>
> I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but clearly Wikipedia is 
> no more (and no less) like a print encyclopedia than email is like 
> traditional ink-on-dead-tree-USPS "snail mail."
>
> I'm beginning to wonder whether we should recognize a division between 
> "high encyclopedic" (as in Diderot, Britannica, etc.) and "low 
> encyclopedic" (as in "Encyclopedia of Beer," "Ohio State Football 
> Encyclopedia," "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction"). 
> Certainly there seem to be things which are not "encyclopedic" but 
> which are nevertheless "wikipedic."

That's a well written analysis of the situation.  Trivia, rather than 
the "high encyclopedic", is what attracts people.  Why Napoleon is 
always pictured with his hand inside his jacket can inspire more 
curiousity than all his battlefield victories put together.  That The 
Guinness Book of Records should be a consistent best seller is a fact 
that should tell us something.  Most of us are not likely to ever visit 
New Haven (I did pass a Sunday afternoon there 20 years ago, so I've 
exceeded my quota)  We're even less likely to visit the mentioned 
pizzerias.  The image of students lined up outside the pizzeria in this 
McLuhanistic hot medium evokes an image that's as strong as anything 
that Proust might ever have written.  My own experience with the 
Bhagirath Palace hotel in Delhi, India would be as unflattering as the 
desciption by V. S. Naipaul, but mentioning it should not be read as an 
advertisement.

The guardians of the high encyclopedic need to get a life.  The function 
of the high encyclopedic is merely to inform and instruct.  The low 
encyclopedic has the honorable task of dilighting and inspiring.

Ec