On 2/26/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
By comprehensive I mean that it covers what it should. We could write
lots of tests for this (several present themselves), but for now,
let's leave it at that. It's not missing anything. Note that NPOV is
an aspect of comprehensiveness. This also covers excluding stupid
trivia, to my mind. It also means that it provides a good start to
research. This includes providing further places to look, i.e. "If
you want to know more about Derrida, go read..."
Comprehensiveness sounds good, but there is a lot of room for disagreement
about what "should" be included. Articles also need to be focused and
balanced, because on the Web they can't be very long. We have links so
excessive detail and tangents can be linked to. And too many articles have
long sections on one aspect while giving short shrift to other aspects.
By accurate I mean that nothing in it is incorrect. Currently we try
to achieve this by sourcing, and in some cases
that's obviously going
to be necessary. Where those cases are is something we need to
determine better. Sourcing should be used to back up things a
reasonable reader might doubt.
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline
citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
Interesting articles will establish context. They should be able to
show why the subject is interesting to someone who
isn't already a
fan/scholar/whatever of the subject. I would particualrly note that I
think we'd be in much better shape if we stopped talking about
notability and started talking about interestingness. This would put
us in a position to give more of a pass to well-written, thorough
articles on odd but cool topics. This is good - it has demonstrably
proven itself to be something people expect from Wikipedia. [[Heavy
Metal Umlaut]] anybody?
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who
wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the
subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to
"sell" a
topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because
they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where
you come across the topic randomly.
Adam