User:GTBacchus/Wikithoughts
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Idle thoughts - this may shape into something later
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[edit] Wikipedia is...
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia, it turns out. Wikipedia is something new - something we don't have a word for yet except for... Wikipedia. The fact that Wikipedia has set out to be an encyclopedia shaped the core policies that Jimbo initated at its inception. I propose, however, that Wikipedia will not always be an encyclopedia.
The first encyclopedia is commonly taken to be Diderot's. Whichever encyclopedia or encyclopedia-like publication was the first, it was just that - a publication. A print publication, to be specific. Whether transcribed or typeset, it existed on paper. As we all know, "Wikipedia is not paper". What consequences follow from this difference? Can Wikipedia be "not paper" and still be an encyclopedia, for long?
There are already some exceptions to the "Wikipeida is an encyclopedia" rule. For example, we allow that Wikipedia is an almanac, in certain cases. There will be other things, things we don't have words for perhaps, that Wikipedia will include over time, things that don't fall under the traditional purveiw of an "encyclopedia".
[edit] Notability
As an AfD semi-regular, I've become aware of a point of tension that arises in a very significant fraction of AfD discussions. Articles are constantly nominated for deletion on grounds of being "non-notable", and some fraction of those articles garner some degree of "keep" support on the grounds that non-notability is not, or should not be, a reason for deletion. "Wikipedia is not paper," it is argued, so why not have an article on every school, for example. Schools might be the best example here; I'm not sure.
At any rate, there's a definite... pressure, an internal pressure against the floor of non-notability. Arguments against letting the bottom drop out are numerous and persuasive - Wikipedia is not infinite, etc. The best is probably the whole verifiability thing. Our revered WP:V is actual policy, and it's just about impossible to argue against it. But, everything that's verifiable is not encyclopedic - a problem, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, Wikipedia is not a directory, etc.
Schools highlight this problem (as do roads) because they're completely verifiable, in general. As long as things are verifiable, there will be a pressure to include them in Wikipedia, which seems to many on first impression to be a collection of all factual information, which is a different thing from an encyclopedia, of course. Diderot never could have attempted such a thing, with the technology he had. We can't either, of course... right?
[edit] Reliability
Wikipedia's been in the news recently, as we all know. Someone logs on, sees the word "Wikipedia", thinks "encyclopedia", and proceeds to bring their preconceptions about encyclopedias to Wikipedia. Those who are satisfied with Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, we don't hear about, but occasionally those who are displeased make a lot of noise. It turns out that Wikipedia "contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate". That's unacceptable in an encyclopedia. If you bring a different set of preconceptions to Wikipedia - that it's not an encyclopedia, it's... what it is - then you don't get so disappointed when you encounter the wildly inaccurate. You just fix it. You might even find out who wrote it and leave a message on their talk page about it. You don't alert the media though. It's just business as usual. We've all found wild inaccuracies, and fixed them. None of us pretends that we won't find more. This is cool with us, because, from here on the inside, we don't think of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, we just think of it as... what it is, as Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is something you approach with a totally different attitude than you bring to any kind of book. You have to come to the site understanding what its strengths and weaknesses are, and then you learn that, within those strengths and weaknesses, it's something incredibly worthwhile. What exactly it is has yet to be determined - it's still amorphic, and finding its place. Evolution will happen, and policies and traditions will gradually change, and Wikipedia will become... what it is, Wikipedia. Then, we'll all find out what Wikipedia is.
