Hi, Richard! The reason I find the War of 1812 amusing as an example is simply because to me (an Australian) it's a completely unimportant subject. I am neither British nor American and it all occurred on the other side of the world to me; why should I know or care? Yet the American War of Independence (same parties a few years earlier) is important to Australian history because it caused Britain to decide to establish an Australian colony.
Importance is very much subjective. It might well be that wars in which America participated are well-covered in Wikipedia but surely there were lots of other wars that aren't well-covered but are important to their region's history? And no doubt many readers of Wikipedia have no interest in wars at all and believe Seinfeld episodes and Britney Spears are important topics. Who is to be the arbiter of what is "important"? It seems to me that so long as someone finds a topic interesting and has a few sources to draw on, they might as well write a Wikipedia article about it. If one person thinks the topic is interesting enough to invest the effort, odds on someone else will find it of interest. I write primarily local history material on WP and am often surprised at how often others join in with contributions to articles I have started. The reality is that stubs do get expanded and redlinks do lead to the creation of new articles even on topics that I would freely acknowledge are not the world's most important topics but nonetheless clearly of interest to some folk. And where there are writers for a topic, I believe there must also be readers. So that is why I disagree with your comment about WP being for the benefit of a few thousand editors and indifferent to what the public wants/needs. I'm not one of the top 10000 editors. I'm just a reader of Wikipedia who one day started editing bits and pieces about the suburb I live in and my involvement grew very slowly from there. Isn't that the story for most WP editors? Editors are the "public"; they are not selected or certified in any way. WP makes it possible for any one to make small contributions which is far easier for the public to do than the previous model of needing to publish an entire book on the subject, which obviously requires a far greater expertise and thus far less representative of what the public wants/needs. As far as I can see most of the top 10000 editors appear to be making a lot of of their contributions in terms of administration and quality control (eg fighting vandalism) rather than in content. I think the "long tail" of (good faith) editors are mostly contributing content on a range of topics that I believe will continue to grow. I believe that once a WYSIWYG editor for WP becomes available we will see a growth in the long tail of editors and the topics they write on because I think wiki markup is a barrier for many people currently under-represented in the demographics of WP editors. I agree WP has moved into a new phase different from its earliest years and probably its policies and processes might need to change to reflect that. For example, it's fine to "be bold" with a stub, but woe betide the newbie editor that decides to be bold with a well-developed article whose current words may have been carefully crafted to capture the right nuances to keep all the warring factions happy. Personally I believe mature articles need more of a curated approach to incorporate new material contributed by anyone but where the edits are done by more experienced editors of that topic. Not that they should be "gatekeepers" but that the material be added in the right place and in a way that reflects prior agreements in relation to reflecting differing viewpoints. I think the WP policy on mature articles should be "be careful not to break what's already there". Sent from my iPad On 29/10/2012, at 12:19 AM, Richard Jensen <[email protected]> wrote: > I was the one who raised the 1812 example in the context of Wikipedia's > coverage of military history; see Richard Jensen, "Military History on the > Electronic Frontier: Wikipedia Fights the War of 1812," ''The Journal of > Military History'' 76#4 (October 2012): 523-556; the page proofs (with some > typos) are online at > http://www.americanhistoryprojects.com/downloads/JMH1812.PDF > > My argument is that Wikipedia is written by and for the benefit of a few > thousand editors -- what the readers or the general public wants or thinks or > uses is largely irrelevant. > > The growth then depends on the need to recruit new editors -- > using the details from the 1812 article I suggest that fewer and fewer new > editors are actually interested. (I also looked at other major articles on > WWI, WWII, the American Civil War & others and found the same pattern.) > > Look at it demographically: apart from teenage boys coming of age, the > population of computer-literate people who are ignorant of Wikipedia is very > small indeed in 2012. That was not true in 2005 when lots of editors joined > up and did a lot of work on important articles. > > So I think that military history at Wikipedia is pretty well saturated. That > does not mean there are not more possible topics (we have about 130,000 > articles (including stubs) now and major libraries will own maybe 100,000+ > full length books on military topics). I suggest that new editors need to > have an attractive new niche that is not now well covered. I suggest that > they will have a very hard time finding such a niche that allows for the > excitement of new writing about important topics. (such as took place in back > in 2005-2007). Personally I greatly enjoyed writing about George Washington > and Ulysses Grant and Napoleon--that's why I'm here. I would have trouble > explaining to someone why they should write up general #1001, #1002, #1103 > ... let alone colonel #10,001, 10,002, 10,003 .... > > Richard Jensen > User:Rjensen email [email protected] > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wiki-research-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
