[WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

Fri Oct 7 16:36:42 UTC 2005

On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 11:25 -0500, Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 10/7/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > > But who looks up "Earth" in an encyclopaedia?
> >
> > My seven-year-old daughter.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for everyone,
> > not just geeks who are looking for hyper-specialized trivia.
> >
> > > I would expect more people to read [[Brutalist architecture]] than
> > [[Architecture]]....
> >
> > You have surprising expectations.
> 
> I echo this.  I've got a two year old daughter.  One of the reasons
> I'm so active in Wikipedia is that I want her to have a good reference
> source for when we start teaching her.  She's already reading a
> little, so it won't be too long before she starts visiting Wikipedia
> (under careful supervision, mind you) and not log after that before
> she starts editing.  (I'm not letting her serve on ArbCom until she's
> 25, though.)

Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
past.

Justinc