[WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

Sat Jun 10 05:17:00 UTC 2006

There will always be that news story about 28 murders in po-dunk Kansas and
that city will suddenly shoot from a stub to a featured article.  The
creation of human knowledge never ends, and we will never stop gathering it.

mboverload

On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 9, 2006, at 5:09 PM, George Herbert wrote:
> > On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
> >> On Jun 9, 2006, at 4:32 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> >>> We have articles on every single episode of most major TV shows, and
> >>> lots of
> >>> minor ones. You would never see that in any encyclopaedia.
> >>
> >> You would not see that in the Encyclopedia of Late 20th Century
> >> American Television?  Really?  Or do you mean in any "general"
> >> encyclopedia.  Because certainly, Wikipedia reaches the level of a
> >> specialized encyclopedia in a number of areas, like television shows -
> >> but (I hope), we don't go too much beyond that.
> >
> > Out of curiosity, why?
> I'll turn the question on it's head - what's an example, in your
> opinion, of a article topic that would be "beyond a specialized
> encyclopedia devoted to a subject to which the topic is a part" (sorry,
> little convoluted there, but I hope you get the gist)  I ask, because,
> I can't think of a topic like that that would not be, at the same time,
> obviously "not encyclopedic", in the opinion of any random person you
> cared to ask.  Certainly, an article consisting only of polemic on
> Macedonian independence is "beyond a specialized encyclopedia", no
> matter what it's subject, but it's also obviously wrong for Wikipedia.
> I can't think of a topic which fails the first criteria, without being
> obviously unsuitable for Wikipedia.  Can you come up with some
> examples?
>
> > What, exactly, does an end-state Wikipedia project look like, to those
> > who would want us to stop adding new articles at some point?  How and
> > when would you say "stop"?
> When we have articles on every topic for which reputable sources can be
> found.  Of course, we'd have to start up adding new articles in a year
> or so, when a lot of new material has been published, but we could stop
> adding articles for a period, while enough new material was published.
>
> Jesse Weinstein
>
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