[WikiEN-l] Potential Wikipedian growing pains

Wed Sep 21 18:27:23 UTC 2005

David Gerard wrote:

>Andrew Lih wrote:
>  
>
>>I used to tell folks writing for wiki was easy, and the inclusiveness
>>of it has to do with not being like a database or data entry system.
>>That has changed with templating now being extensively used around the
>>Wikimedia projects.
>>    
>>
>Nowadays I pretty much tell new contributors "just write a few
>paragraphs and INCLUDE REFERENCES and don't worry about the fancy
>markup for now. Just INCLUDE THE REFERENCES and people will know it's
>a real article about a real thing."
>
Absolutely!  Speaking as the one who has been pushing the POV on 
Wiktionary that even vocabulary needs to be referenced, I am amazed by 
the people who consider some number of Google hits as evidence.  Some of 
the most common offending terms are those that seek to rename sexual 
practices, or characterize some kind of on-line activity.  A large 
proportion of these terms may indeed be valid, but that requires some 
kind of documentation to distinguish them from something that the 
contributor just made up for the occasion.

Ec