[Wikipedia-l] Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia?

Mon May 26 15:34:00 UTC 2003

Oliver-
> If this is all terribly wrong, can we come up with a more definite policy,
> saying what the criteria are for an article to be allowed, and amend
> [[m:Wiki is not paper]] and the policy pages accordingly?

I agree for the most part, with one exception:

Articles that are always likely to remain stubs should not have their own  
page, but be integrated into the main article. This is especially true for  
fictional realms. Yesterday I merged two-sentence articles about Gnasher,  
Gnipper, Rasher, Bea, and a bunch of other characters from "Dennis the  
Menace" into the main article; the same happened earlier with "Chip 'n  
Dale". If you check the "Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers" article, you will  
notice that it covers extensively the opinions of Chip 'n Dale fan fiction  
authors on the psychological state and possibly hardening life  
circumstances of Louwhiney, a young female Hawaiian anthropomorphic mouse  
and evil twin of lead character Gadget Hackwrench; not to mention giving  
us a summary of the current trends among the authors of Slash fiction  
(that is, gay/lesbian sexual fantasies) regarding the development of  
relationships between Gadget Hackwrench and Tammy the Squirrel.

I like to keep that kind of stuff constrained.

That makes it easier to look after it and edit out material which is going  
overboard. I also think we should strive toward a state where every  
article is about 20000-30000 characters long. An article that cannot be  
this long should be integrated elsewhere, one which is longer should be  
split up.

Otherwise we will soon hear that of our 12 million articles (at the  
current rate, this seems not too far off), 7.5 million cover fictional  
characters. There are probably more of those than real human beings ... So  
please help me with the fiction stuff, I currently seem to be the only one  
who looks after those pages.

Regards,

Erik