From: Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com>
JAY JG wrote:
One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously
as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
acceptable) source. Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias
(i.e. Britannica) harp on. Credibility also brings donations and other
kinds of support and funding.
Hmm, I'd think if we weren't being taken seriously as a reference work,
the servers wouldn't be getting slowly crushed under the ever-growing
weight of readers...
There's a difference between broad popularity and being taken seriously.
Wikipedia is free and huge, that alone makes it popular.
At WP's current size, the chances of finding a
random vanity article is
minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people
have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on
familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or
not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for
them in the first place).
Critics will.
Note that I'm not opposed to scrubbing out
borderline material, I just
don't see a red-alert-the-encyclopedia-is-decaying-right-before-our-eyes
situation that requires instant reaction. Our credibility is much more
dependent on accuracy and completeness of the high-visibility articles,
and energy spent on the marginal is energy taken away from the important.
You have a good point, though I'm not suggesting that there is any "red
alert" situation". However, as has also been pointed out, the issue is not
just vanity articles and silly articles, but also with the 95% of articles
placed on AfD which violate WP:NOT.
Jay.