[WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

Thu Nov 30 19:17:22 UTC 2006

>From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!
>Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:51:19 -0500
>
>On 11/30/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >From: "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com>
> > >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > >To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!
> > >Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:32:21 -0500
> > >
> > >I for one think it's pathetic that Wikipedia is giving up on the 
>mission
> > of
> > >being a complete encyclopedia because there exist specialty sites on
> > >particular areas of knowledge.
> >
> > I disagree. Wikipedia can't be all things to all people, and I think 
>it's
> > silly to try.  Wikipedia should consider itself one of a community of
> > wikis,
> > specifically, the encyclopedic one, with academic standards.  Why not
> > allow
> > for there to be multiple sources of information, and let the different
> > ones
> > specialize in different things and get good at what they do?
>
>
>Why can't Wikipedia be all things to all people?
>
>I have nothing against specialists, but I also see no reason that they
>shouldn't be subsumed in the gaping maw of Wikipedia.
>
>One of the great things about the move to electronic media is that you
>finally have the opportunity to erase the artificial divide between general
>scope and specific detail that is necessary in the print world.

I guess one could try that, but the vision of Wikipedia that I've been 
working with is that it aims to be an *encyclopedia*, understanding that 
word to carry certain connotations about summarizing information from 
secondary sources.  I think that's a worthy goal, and I'm not ready to 
abandon it yet in favor of something I frankly don't believe in.

Consider Wookiepedia, the Star Wars wiki.  That's a great resource for all 
things Star Wars, I'm sure, and it would be a significantly weaker resource 
if they required that all their contributions be sourced in previously 
published sources.  They need original research.  At Wikipedia, meanwhile, 
our article on the French Revolution would be considerably weaker if we 
didn't insist that all material be sourced in other publications.  We need 
verifiability.  I'm quite happy to go to one place for original research, 
and another for verifiable information.

Consider AboutUs.org, a domain directory Wiki.  They aim to cover every 
domain on the web, with directory type information.  Our policies would be 
useless for them, and their content is useless to us, for the most part.  
Hence, two wikis.

I agree that all of this different information should be available, I just 
don't see WP as the top level of the heirarchy; I see us as one of many 
wikis.  Like it or not, we're specialists - we specialize in well-sourced 
articles on topics for which such sources exist.  Let someone like Wikiindex 
take the ceiling; we've got a comfortable niche where we are.

Tony/GTB

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