User:Revolving Bugbear/wikitheory

Wikipedia, in theory and in practice

Wikitheory
-

The Wikipedia title page says:

"[Wikipedia's] purpose is to create and distribute, worldwide, a free encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. [...] Wikipedia is 'an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language.' [...] Members of its community have explained its editing process as a collaborative work of art, a Darwinian-like evolutionary process, or an adversarial 'battlefield of ideas.' [...] In a page on researching with Wikipedia, its authors argue that Wikipedia is valuable for being a social community. That is, authors can be asked to defend or clarify their work, and disputes are readily seen."

So what?

The great Encyclopédie, or "Reasoned Dictionary" first appeared in 1751, arguably the beginning of the sacrosanctity of the encyclopedia. The idea was a "figurative system of human knowledge", a collection of all that was known to mankind. It was believed that a body of knowledge collected by men who lay (at least partly) outside the noble elite (such as Voltaire and Rousseau) would yield fairer, more complete results.

Wikipedia is the Encyclopédie to the extreme. Anyone who can read and can press the keys of a computer can access and edit Wikipedia. The idea is this: bring together an unbounded number of minds from across the globe -- any person in any place -- to compile a comprehensive body of communal knowledge. If no one is barred from accessing the encyclopedia, then anyone can share his knowledge with anyone else. The walls between the informed and the uninformed begin to break down. Knowledge begins to lose its bias on the basis of race, age, socioeconomic status, location, and other factors. Knowledge becomes "ours", not "mine".

Knowledge is not objective. In order for knowledge to exist, someone has to know it. It has to be in someone's head. There may be things that are objectively true or objectively false. But Wikipedia is not an endeavor to spread truth. It spreads knowledge -- systematic awareness of information. Wikipedia is based on the premise that everybody knows something. It is not based on the Platonic idea that knowledge is a revelation of a higher form, nor the Baconian postulate that knowledge is only worthwhile if it is useful. It relies on the idea that, together, people know more than they do separately.

This is why there are no experts on Wikipedia to legislate what is entered into the Wikipedia, no specialists to exclude pursuits that are "not academic". What is an acceptable Wikipedia topic? Why, damn near anything. We write what we know, that everyone else may read it. To the scientific community, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer episodes, Chris "Abyss" Parks, and Downsview Park may not seem like serious or worthwhile areas of inquiry. But we are not the scientific community. We are the world community.

Sure, professional encyclopedias have their place. But there is room on this earth for us, too, and a worthwhile, meaningful place for projects such as Wikipedia. This project is not perfect. It will never be perfect. But neither will any professional encyclopedia. We are not better or worse; we are a different type of collection for a different type of knowledge.

Wikipractice
WikiRealism and You (and You and You and You and You ...)

Inclusionists battle with Deletionists. Mergists confuse both of the above. Delusionists mostly try not to get hit with the objects thrown by the above categories. Vandalists piss everyone off.

These are all wonderful theories. (Well, all but one.) But the reality of the situation is this: Inclusionists will always create articles that annoy Deletionists, and the Deletionists will always delete articles that the Inclusionists made. Vandals will always firebomb the efforts of hard-working editors, but hey, that's why Jimbo invented the revert button.

That is why I am a Wikipedia Realist. Wikipedia is what it is. It will never be perfect, mostly because every editor and moderator has a different idea of what the perfect Wikipedia would be. Things get created; things get deleted. Things get merged; things get forked. (I hear you snickering.) Wikipedia exists now; it will probably also exist later. (If you are one of those people who believes that existence doesn't really exist, then why are you wasting your time editing an encyclopedia that doesn't exist?)

You can, as an individual editor, have an enormous impact on Wikipedia. Looking for likeminded Wikipedians? Join or found a Wikiproject! Want to get into the down and dirty politics of what belongs on Wikipedia? Hang around the Articles for Deletion! Want to see a picture of a dog riding a unicycle? Yeah, so do I. But if you upload it to Wikipedia without a good reason, it will probably get deleted.

The tenets of WikiRealism are quite simple: It happens, expect it. Be realistic. Take the following as guidelines of how to think like a Realistic Wikipedian:


 * Many good articles should realistically exist. Write them.
 * Many not good articles should realistically not exist. Delete them.
 * Having lots of articles with very little content is not realistically practical. Merge them.
 * Having a really long article with content about too many things is not realistically practical. Fork it.
 * Some bad articles are simply too young to have evolved and may become good articles. Give them time.
 * Some bad articles will always be bad articles. They may be realistically deleted.
 * Err on the side of caution, but remember, there's always undelete.