[WikiEN-l] Afd nominations

Fri Sep 30 19:10:49 UTC 2005

On 9/30/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
> >What business do you have in someone else's house?  ;-)
>
> They invited me to help them, because they knew they were too sentimental to
> clear out the junk. ;-)

Jay, I respect your attitude and ability probably more than you
realize, but unfortunately it isn't very prevalent in AfD.  And in
AfD, there are no invitations to come into the house.  It's more like
writing your own warrant and then smashing down the door.  :-(

> No, it's really not. If an article, or a fact in an article establishes why
> it is significant (though properly sourced material etc.) then it's going to
> be kept.  If the information can't be cited from a reliable source, or it
> happens to be pure trivia (e.g. the location of Harry Truman's favorite
> booth at the Savory Grill in Kansas City), even if cited from a reputable
> source, then it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article.

Frankly, when we have an article about the Savory Grill in Kansas
City, I expect the location of Harry Truman's favorite booth, if cited
from a reputable source, to be an encyclopedic detail included in the
article.

> It depends on judgement, which we are supposed to exercise. There is a
> difference between the Wikipedia article on Harry Truman, and David
> McCullough's 1120 biography of Truman.  Why not include every single fact
> found in McCullough's book? And from Brian Burnes's and Margaret Truman's
> and Ralph Keyes works, and Harry Truman's own autobiography as well?
> Because it is an encyclopedia article, and 3,000 page encyclopedia articles,
> even if broken up into hundreds of smaller sub-articles, aren't useful to
> the audience we are trying to serve.

If all of these works are broken up into smaller sub-articles, good
editors will combine them into any number of different, useful and
comprehensive articles that include all the knowledge that all of
these works contain.  In other words, every verifiable fact from David
McCullough's book does not have to end up in the Harry Truman article,
but there's no reason every verifiable fact should not be included in
Wikipedia.

> >Wikipedia is revolutionary and important because the level of detail
> >captured is beyond that of any prior work.  This is why many here
> >enjoy Wikipedia more than any other reference.  This is also why
> >Wikipedia is gaining editors every day.  The dominant cultural message
> >is "Your knowledge is useful, please add it.  We'll help you sort,
> >organize, and present it."  Filtering the input stream is helpful, as
> >is merging data to appropriate locations, but to actively work against
> >adding verifiable NPOV information is a fool's errand that can only
> >lead to frustration in the long term.
>
> The level of detail we *can* capture, and the level of detail we *should*
> capture, are two entirely different things.  This is still intended to be a
> general purpose encyclopedia for a general audience.  We are writing
> articles, not PhD dissertations, or multi-volume histories.  Again, there is
> a reason why the History of England article does not contain the same amount
> of information as Churchill's four volume "A History of the English Speaking
> Peoples" that has nothing to do with "Wikipedia is not paper" and everything
> to do with "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia".

See my reply above for why I believe this is a specious argument.  Our
software-based encyclopedia is capable of presenting the general
audience whatever level of detail that they choose to suit their
interest.  Just as there is a "History of Malta" link in the "Malta"
article, we're capable of splitting articles as they become too large
for the general "first view".  I see no reason why this cannot
continue to scale much further than it has.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused