"The Economist" and the "Rag", Is Wikipedia an Encyclopedia? Options

[WhispersOfWisdom]

http://www.economist.com/printedition/disp...ory_id=10789354

I sense that one of my favorite magazines of "yesteryear" is beginning to find it's way into the central core of our every day lives. When everyone has an answer and everyone is an economist or a consultant, I tend to go the otherway. Likewise, when everyone is bullish, I tend to be "bearish." ( The reverse is also true.)

Are you an inclusionist? I guess I lean toward acceptance and surrender...

Wikipedia defaults to the mean and mediocre, but maybe that is not all bad?

This post has been edited by WhispersOfWisdom: Mon 10th March 2008, 2:29pm

[Moulton]

Wikipedia would do well to bill itself as the Internet's definitive compendium of popular culture, lovingly crafted by dedicated consumers of that popular culture.

There is room on the Internet for an Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, and Wikipedia is clearly the front runner.

There is also need for a traditional encyclopedia, treating traditional topics of academic interest with scholarly attention. Wikipedia is not organized to do that, and should discontinue that branch of work, in favor of other sites that feature work by credentialed scholars.

[Poetlister]

If The Economist isn't a reliable source, what is? It makes the Guardian look user-friendly and colloquial. So will this article be duly cited in Wikipedia?

[Yehudi]

It makes the Guardian look user-friendly and colloquial.

Not to mention that its coverage of foreign affairs is much better than the Guardian's (unless you count US-Canadian dalliance as a foreign affair ).

[Jonny Cache]

For those USers not familiar with it, The Economist is kinda like the UK equivalent of The Harvard Lampoon.

Jonny

[Unrepentant Vandal]

Who is Andrew Lih?

[Peter Damian]

Are we missing something here.

Consider the fictional characters of Pokémon, the Japanese game franchise with a huge global following, for example. Almost 500 of them have biographies on the English-language version of Wikipedia (the largest edition, with over 2m entries), with a level of detail that many real characters would envy. But search for biographies of the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and you would find no more than a dozen—and they are rather poorly edited.

Inclusionists believe that the disparity between Pokémon and Solidarity biographies would disappear by itself, if only Wikipedia loosened its relatively tight editorial control and allowed anyone to add articles about almost anything.

The article quotes this with apparent approval. Thus Wikipedia's rather patchy coverage of obscure medieval theologians as opposed to obscure Pokemon characters is due to narrow editing policies? Really?

I edited on the subject of obscure medieval theologians for some years and never noticed these narrow policies. Never had an article deleted. Quite the reverse, although I often felt my labours were regarded rather like the serious articles in Playboy, there to impart a patina of respectability to the real subject matter.

For those USers not familiar with it, The Economist is kinda like the UK equivalent of The Harvard Lampoon.

Jonny

That is quite correct.

[Jonny Cache]

Who is Andrew Lih?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fuzheado

And a moderator on the Wikienlist.

Jonny

[gomi]

For those USers not familiar with it, The Economist is kinda like the UK equivalent of The Harvard Lampoon.

Sure, and the Private Eye is much like U.S. News and World Report. Uh-huh.

[Jonny Cache]

For those USers not familiar with it, The Economist is kinda like the UK equivalent of The Harvard Lampoon.

Sure, and the Private Eye is much like U.S. News and World Report. Uh-huh.

I just meant that the level of pretension is so hilarious that it must be at least partially deliberate self-mockery.

Not that there's anything wrong with that …

Jonny

[gomi]

I just meant that the level of pretension is so hilarious that it must be at least partially deliberate self-mockery.

I always assumed that their pomposity and excess of self-esteem came simply from being British, but you may also have a point: they're being deliberately British.

[Jonny Cache]

View the article

Educators need to be more concerned with the forms of conduct that students learn from participating in Wikipediot “culture”, and less with Wikipedia’s ephemeral content.

If they do that, they will realize that Wikipedia is one of the most elitist cultures that one can imagine — its privileged classes don’t just delete articles, they delete entire points of view from fair representation.

— Jon Awbrey, 11 Mar 2008, 01:54 PM

[Jonny Cache]

Sorry about my own intrusions —

Could some intrepid Moderator maybe lift and separate the on-topic bits from the off-topic bits of the above thread?

Gratia in futuro,

Jonny

[Kato]

Sorry about my own intrusions —

Could some intrepid Moderator maybe lift and separate the on-topic bits from the off-topic bits of the above thread?

Gratia in futuro,

Jonny

<moderator note> Off topic posts moved here
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=16552