[Wikipedia-l] A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around For A While

Wed Jan 5 20:20:40 UTC 2005

Ronald Chmara wrote:
> My older brother despises some wikipedia sections that are written in 
> his field (cultural anthropology, with specific emphasis on the paiute 
> people), as he is an expert in that specific area, and finds the 
> articles "shallow", "without depth and nuance", and "lacking in a 
> deeper explanation". They are written by "non-experts", and thus make 
> "factual and comprehension errors".
> 
> The articles are also written for *use* by non-experts.... So, I asked 
> my brother how many pages it would take to correct the errors, and he 
> pointed me towards his latest body of work, over 500 pages, and that's 
> just the historical *sites* of the paiute.

O.k., but I would *love* to talk to your brother.  :-)

I think he would agree that there's a place in the world for an
encyclopedia article -- a general introduction to the non-specialist,
a nice overview that provides context for further learning, which will
involve perhaps digging into a 500 page tome.

Such an article can be "shallow" and "without depth and nuance" in two
different ways: one is that the article sucks, the other is that this
is inherent to the nature of an encyclopedia article, i.e. space is
limited, assumed background of the reader has to be limited, etc.

Could he fix the article?  Especially when there are factual and
comprehension errors, this seems easy enough to fix.  Fixing the
"lacking in deeper explanation" and so on, i don't know, but I don't
worry about it much, either.

--Jimbo