User:Bjrobinson/Thoughts

Why aren't the Planning articles better?
So I spent literally two years fiddling with quite a few of the Urban Planning articles, doing what i could when i could. Others have one even more. Despite this the whole category is a bit crap.. why?

Well the often quoted 'Nature' article which found that Wiki was as accurate as traditional encyclopedia for science is interesting http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm. browsing the science articles, they are, frankly bloody good in the main... why?

Then there are the film, TV and Music articles, they are also pretty good, factually correct, well categorised and well sourced.

Humanities are different matter entirely. Even Humanities itself has tags on the page and few decent sources. The same goes for Sociology. Hmm There's a pattern here.

Science
Science is a complex field which has many conflicting theories and arguments BUT there are millions of academics, journal articles and sources. It is Science if you can prove something using Scientific Method or at least get a decent hypothesis then your quids in. You can find sources, you can reach conclusions. Perhaps more importantly the people contributing to science are really experts, they are used to citing sources and researching, even simple things, such as knowing how to properly cite, the field is about research.

TV, Games, music
Well this one maybe self explanatory, there are fixed sources, its much more black and white. Of course there must be raging debates about Music Genre and semantics, but well, its all nice and simple, a Game is just a game, its fixed, its static, its commercial so there is plenty of stuff out there.

Social Sciences
Are so much more complex. Finally, given the business cycle means I'm not too busy, i tried to finally sit down and re-write the regeneration entries... but its all so complicated, there are masses of different opinions and without access to a uni library, sourcing is very difficult. Basically it was too hard, to do it properly for a mere practitioner is very difficult. There are very few hard and fast rules or established 'facts'. Sourcing is a nightmare, and i note that a lot of pretty minor unimportant stuff is on these entries simply because someone has managed to source it, and entries with sources are much nicer to have.

Recently I have gone a bit bad. Been getting involved in things which have nothing to do with me and spent way too long arguing with a certain someone... there is a huge proportion of wiki users who don't actually contribute all that much to actual entries, and its easy to see why. I have wasted a lot of time in AfD and doing what many people do, refreshing the 'recent changes' page because its so much fun... or rather its easier, and i do take WP seriously, and i want to see it succeed, its much easier to contribute that way than re-write messy articles.

What can be done
We need more students and perhaps some proper academics to look at all these. Wouldn't re-writing the Urban Renewal sections make a fantastic Dissertation? Wouldn't a real researcher make more of a real contribution to the world by working on WP for a few weeks as opposed to just one journal article? But without winning the lottery or someone wanting to pay me for it, I'll just to just keep fiddling about.

I just wanted to get that on 'paper'.