[WikiEN-l] How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

Wed Jan 11 14:57:50 UTC 2006

There's a specialist topic that's about to create its own wiki. In
discussion on a board, one person said "Why not just use Wikipedia?
What you're describing is identical." Another responded with: "No,
some 15 year old moron will mark it for deletion just because they
know nothing about it."

So that's part of our public image now. Well done alienating webcomics
authors, i.e. creators of memes and popular culture on the net.

Not to mention the way the webcomics AC case ended: AFD trolls now
have the all-clear to work actively to alienate actual experts,
because the self-professed ignorant are now *officially* to be
considered equal to those who have an actual bloody clue.

I was amazed knowledge of it had spread so far. Jimbo, you heard about
this example at the recent UK Wikimedia meet (the doll collectors) -
this was actually an independent example from the same field.

Experts from fields that actually haven't been alienated literally
don't think it's worth bothering to try writing in Wikipedia any more.
Is there anything we can do to rehabilitate Wikipedia's image in the
outside world?

(yes, geni, I know you're happy to be rid of annoying specialist experts)

- d.