Wikipedia foe becomes a fan, by Al Fasoldt Options

[thekohser]

We seem to have lost one.



This post has been edited by thekohser:

[Somey]

We seem to have lost one.

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on this subject, but if his original objection was simply lack of accuracy (due to lack of expert review, fact-checking, etc.), then it's not a huge loss, at least in my opinion - inaccuracy, like vandalism, is a recruitment tool. If he were pointing out things that were stupid, offensive, or blatantly agenda-driven, that would be different... FWIW, it's true that WP articles about cities and towns accumulate quite a lot of data over time, some of which is useful to certain people (again assuming it's fairly accurate).

The real problem IMO is that Wikipedia devalues the intellectual side of knowledge-gathering in favor of a more mechanistic, copy-paste approach that threatens to stifle and ossify human progress. (And so on.) For an article about a city or town, or really almost any well-defined, well-understood physical object, that approach isn't a huge problem. Articles about ideas, concepts, politics, events, theoretical sciences, philosophies, etc., are the real concern - but if that's not what Al Fasoldt is into, then I suppose you can't really blame him for anything worse than a limited perspective.

[JeffB]

The real problem IMO is that Wikipedia devalues the intellectual side of knowledge-gathering in favor of a more mechanistic, copy-paste approach that threatens to stifle and ossify human progress. (And so on.) For an article about a city or town, or really almost any well-defined, well-understood physical object, that approach isn't a huge problem. Articles about ideas, concepts, politics, events, theoretical sciences, philosophies, etc., are the real concern - but if that's not what Al Fasoldt is into, then I suppose you can't really blame him for anything worse than a limited perspective.

Good point Somey. I've often said I could never have written my first article with today's rules. That article started out as an essay interleaved with facts. Even at the time I wrote the article Caldera was a dead OS and what I wanted to explore was how Caldera had touched on many of the issues that would later be critical in Linux desktop development. Caldera foreshadowed and resolving the issues the broader issues the community wouldn't deal with for another 5-10 years. The editorial aspects are still clear today, stuff that would be marked [[WP:SYN]]. But that is what given the article a cohesive feel. Most of the other technical articles I've worked on are collections of facts. Its really in things like wikibooks where ideas get explored.