On 6/9/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw(a)netwood.net> wrote:
....
Not that there
are not
real issues (there were real issues behind the deletionist/inclusionist
fight too),
Deletionist/inclusionist issue is real. Largly due to the problem that
prior to wikipedia no one appears to have given much though to what an
encyopedia is. but what we should include/what we should not include
is a serious issue.
--
geni
That's close, but not quite it. I think what it is more about is that
previously encyclopedias were written by fairly homogenous "elites",
if you will, and that the inherent economic limits meant that they
were forced to stay within the area of "no-brainers", subjects which
were to them obviously encyclopedia-worthy, which they could easily
reach consensus on, being fairly homogenous elites. But by the same
token, that means that they never had to grapple with any edge issues,
whereas we do, as en has by and large exhausted a good many of the
obviously encyclopedia-worthy articles (though not all, or else we
wouldn't have the missing encyclopedia article project), and so must
confront the margins; and of course, Wikipedia is hardly written by a
fairly homogenous elite, regardless of whatever it may have started
life as, or the realities of its power structure.
~maru