On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
Yes, but these are not exactly obscure people. If he
went and found an
article on an obscure 13th century poet which was crap, I would be not
quite as bothered. But Jane Fonda? Bill Gates?
But clearly "obscurity" is not the factor which determines a good or
bad article. Plenty of articles on obscure people are very good and
plenty articles on very simple things can be quite bad. But still, he
did not, of course, give any rationale for these two articles except
that they exemplify the fact that Wikipedia is edited by amateurs and
sometimes has spotty content. So what? Oh, the Bill Gates article
should be better. I think it *is* a bit better since he looked at it.
Bill Gates is a major figure, no doubt. Jane Fonda is not obscure but
the world doesn't revolve around her, either -- she's a U.S. actress
who has gotten press because of a few of her political stances she
took in the 1960s.
But nobody's making excuses here. I'm just saying that you will always
be able to find sore spots if you want to. If you believe in the
Wikipedia way, what you do is try to fix them or call them to the
attention to others. If you don't, then you write pissy articles about
them.
I don't think it's worth taking such criticisms too seriously, because
they boil down to "Wikipedia articles are sometimes spotty and written
poorly." Well, that's no surprise to anyone. That's not why it's
popular, that's not why it's interesting, and that's not why it's a
good project.
We're not making software, here -- just because some parts of it are
spotty doesn't mean the entire package won't work. In that way we're a
lot less restrained than the open source software projects and can
afford to have a philosophy of eventualism.
Well, I don't agree. It is my intention that we
be valued for
completeness and coherency and "brilliant prose" *as well as* for being
freely licensed, with magnificent breadth and speed and usefulness, etc.
There will always be places on Wikipedia without brilliant prose, and
there will be places with it. Those who want to value us on our
strengths will. Those who don't, won't.
FF