Re:The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
by schrijver on Thursday November 24, 2011 @06:31AM
(#3274006)
Interesting use of the words ‘us’ / ‘we’ here: ‘We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you.’ Who are the ‘we’ you speak of? It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us? Should that not be the starting point?
Re:The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
by xyzzyz on Thursday November 24, 2011 @12:19PM
(#3274857)
I used to contribute quite a lot to Wikipedia in the past (I stopped because of lack of time), and I identify with Wikipedia community, that's why I used "we".
It seems you speak of the group of people that is already used to writing wikipedia articles, and you are in this way enforcing a divide between them and potential contributors. Shouldn’t the ‘we’ who wrote Wikipedia be all of us?
Of course it should -- we are very happy to accept contribution. The only thing we ask for from contributors is to make some effort and spend hour or a half on reading Wikipedia rules, otherwise their contribution becomes a burden on us -- because people who don't care enough to read and follow the rules are not likely to stay longer, it's enough for them to create their promotional article and leave us with maintaining it.
Re:The Closed, Unfriendly World of Wikipedia
by dhx on Thursday November 24, 2011 @05:52AM
(#3273938)
A poor article ("stub") that needs a complete rewrite can be better than no article. The reason is that a poor article encourages a rewrite. An article that doesn't exist will probably remain non-existent.
But there are also clearly defined rules for how to participate in Wikipedia, which you just disregarded as rules made "such that only the elite who have busted their chops should be able to [contribute]". You see, if you write an article without any sources or references, badly formated, without interlinks etc, it's really of no help to us -- getting it into shape (i.e. formatting, finding sources) will take more time than rewriting it from scratch. We can create crappy articles about not notable subjects ourselves, thank you. Do you also think that Linus Torvalds is wrong with rejecting patchs which do not meet guidelines? Do you think it's unfair to make people read and care about Linux guidelines? Do you think it will make Linux a dead community?