Vanity of Article Writers, ...a time to cast away stones Options

[GlassBeadGame]

I have been struck lately by the growing smugness of "article writers." Those who avoid wonkery and administraton for the creaton or "improvement" of articles on Wikpedia. To hear them say you would thing they were creating some great works of literature. I got to tell you I don't see it. Even among our FA artistes. They use this activity much in the same way "vandal patrols" or policy wonks use the stuff they do for playing the game that is Wikipedia.

At best I'd say is "Well pretty good for a sand painting made in a sandbox surrounded by pre-schoolers flinging rocks and spraying down the place with pressure hoses...but come back tomorrow." Wikipedia articles, even FAs, are no great shakes. Certainly they don't justify the sense of self-entitlement these prima donnas pretend. Nor do they make up for the many levels or irresponsibilty directed at people outside the project that results from their work.

The only thing of any value in Wikipedia is it partially functions in the the same task Wikia Search fails at, collecting a list of manually generated sources (very imperfectly vetted) and indirectly returning them on the top of search request. You don't need article writers for this task at all.

[Obesity]

Give it a rest, GBG. FA writers are the last place you should be directing your idle, pissy and predictable ire.

You never struck me as a particularly insightful aesthetic critic, but it shouldn't take Harold Bloom to point out that, Pokémon and Power Rangers paeans excepted, the best Featured Articles demonstrate palpable literary style and substance, especially when compared to entries from, say, World Book (the dumbed-down paper encyclopedia for dummies, which was the only thing I had to read growing up).

Must I drag out my favorite article once again as example?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._A._Andr%C3...edition_of_1897

This is textbook, well, textbook. It's better than most textbooks. You sound bitter and uninformed to suggest otherwise.

And it's not an isolated example.

Who, may I ask, besides the inimitable Giano (known slightly more for his over-the-top posturing than for his fluid and witty style) constitutes this insufferable gang of smug, self-satisfied wankers?

At this moment, the lady doing the best article work is Moni3. A industrious lesbian oddball from Florida, she is many things, but she is not a prima donna. She did the Harvey Milk article and is currently working on Museum of Bad Art (still a work in progress, but already mildly dazzling and, with a tiny bit of professional editing, would be suitable for a number of magazines). People like Moni3 (or Ceoil, or several others) naturally take pride in their full-time hobby (when you work for free, pride is all you can take), but they can hardly be accused of strutting about cyberspace demanding oblations; you know what they do? They write. A lot.

You are what the kids call a hater, and I suspect you couldn't write your way out of a cardboard box (and don't come after me to your tu quoque's; I'm also practically illiterate and almost used the word "ablutions" instead of "oblations," above).

People like you and others I won't mention see Wikipedia as Dimension X, or the Bizarro universe, when it in many respects approximates the regular universe more than we care to admit: full of nasty people, stacked to its eyeballs in bullshit, with a few reasonable souls and delightful, distracting baubles to be enjoyed, if you take the time to look for them.

Repent. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/thumbsdown.gif)

This post has been edited by Obesity:

[Kato]

People like you and others I won't mention see Wikipedia as Dimension X, or the Bizarro universe, when it in many respects approximates the regular universe more than we care to admit: full of nasty people, stacked to its eyeballs in bullshit, with a few reasonable souls and delightful, distracting baubles to be enjoyed, if you take the time to look for them.

That could apply to almost anything. Even Fox News has the odd decent and delightful person involved.

Look, when you see Wikipedia as a con-artist's sweatshop, or a plain bully, which are surely reasonable, proven positions to take by anyone's measure, then how else do you expect people to respond?

That said, there are some really good articles on Wikipedia. As good as you are likely to get on a topic. Though these are scarce. And I have time for anyone who is in the act of creating something of worth.

Months ago, I wrote here that the Art articles are dreadful - you hit the roof. But the plain fact is that they are terrible. Sure, you can point to some quality article on a Bosch painting, but they are few and far between. One needle in a haystack, after how many years now? The "Wisdom of Crowds" hasn't produced anything like the quality Wikipedios would like to believe.

[Obesity]

That could apply to almost anything. Even Fox News has the odd decent and delightful person involved.

I kind of like Fox-News. Especially the blonde bobble-heads in microskirts yammering in raspy, whisky-soaked tones.

It's a recurring wikipedian myth to position wikipedia and "nothing" as the only possibilities. Wikipedia is decidedly not better than a rich and diverse internet of independent sites and documents, created by people who actually understand the topics they're involved in.

Sigh.... does anyone remember how shitty, unreliable and disorganized these richly diverse, independent sites always were before WP came along, how much they suck now and how much they will continue to suck if WP ever loses its prominence. Let's bring back GeoCities, and all our problems will be solved.

99% of the Internet blows. Wikipedia does not boast a superior success rate, but merely sucks in a slightly different key.

That's the button I wanted to press.

That's actually not the button you wanted to press, but I am grateful for your amusement at my response.

If you read your OP, what you were attempting to do, with all of the tiresome and rhetorically sluggish cantankerousness to which we have become accustomed, was conflate WP article writers with a very specific (and now passé) gaggle of martyr-crying attention whores. I assure you that most of the "best" writing is currently being performed by gentle and unassuming people like Karanacs, who are under no delusions that they're creating anything sublime, but still take pleasure in creating something from nothing.

I very much doubt these nice ladies "wannabe" any more than they are: geeky, scrupulous hobbyists who are able to string to words together with a perfunctory level of elegance and are pleased to share their work with a number of online strangers. How repugnant! How purposeless! How blind they are to the big picture! Please, GBG, put them in their place; bring those hoity-toity housewives down to earth for all of us. They're just..... so.... smug.

You really should have taken that hitch-hike on the triangle between New York, San Francisco and Mexico City. Instead you waste what is left to your youth being a fanboy to wannabe "writers" on a fake encyclopedia.

I will mostly refrain from responding to this lowblow outside of the Support Group thread from which the sentiment originated. For the moment, I assure you that Wikipediot "fanboy"-ishness constitutes but a footnote in the comprehensive catalog of unsavory and unproductive dalliances upon my "youth," such as it is, has been squandered. The balance of that catalog is a far greater cause for concern.

This post has been edited by Obesity:

[Cla68]

Doubtless, GBG had no intention for this thread to involve discussions of individual FA articles, but I saw one today that was recently promoted which I believe is one of the "gems" that Obesity mentions. This article, about an old railway bridge, is fantastic. The article even includes a radar loop showing the storm that destroyed the bridge as well as a beautiful, recent panoramic photo of the site.

Sure, the subject is obscure and perhaps, esoteric, but this shows someone using Wikipedia to benefit the Internet community, as Obesity put it, "Making something from nothing." The article's writer is Dtbohrer who doesn't strike me as a smug, condescending, insufferable ANI troller. I'd say that applies to most FA writers or editors who otherwise do their best to write articles that do their subjects the justice they deserve.

This post has been edited by Cla68: