User talk:とある白い猫/Mailinglist post

Please do not bother replying to this unless you read it completely. I have to arguments for you to consider. Feel free to agree or disagree.

Argument 1:
Here is a rather unique argument. Lets put the philosophical arguments of deletionism and inclusionism aside for a minute or two.

Let's say I want to access the information on a particular matter. For the sake of argument I will use a non-fiction related example: 1000000000000 (number) which is a redirect to a section in Orders of magnitude (numbers), an article with some 35+ sections (I lost count).

Let's study this scenario:

Say a person heard the term trillion while listening to a news report on United States public debt... An average person would seek that information on an encyclopedia. Let's assume the person chose wikipedia to seek this information.

If a person I desires to have quick information on the number 1,000,000,000,000, he or she would be forced to load that massive page. This can be very problematic.

Let's also assume the person does not have access to a fiber optic line. Typically most people around the planet still use 56k links. The person may very well be traveling. In such a case, the user would connect to the Internet over a GPRS connection - something close to a 56k connection typically. It would take minutes to just get the basic information desired. Because in order to see the information on I would have to pull countless number section articles. I also want to add that most cell-phones and hand held devices have a tiny screen. So the user would have to scroll down quite a bit unless the section is directly linked. Even then I do not know how well a cell phone or hand held browser will handle that.

So in such a scenario it is very unpleasant to use wikipedia.

Is the number 1,000,000,000,000 notable? I do not know about that. It certainly is a popular term. I seriously doubt there is a whole lot of research over the number. I do not believe there are a whole lot of secondary sources covering it.

Of course there is an entry on Wiktionary for trillion with links leading back to Wikipedia. Trillion is a complex term with dual meanings actually.

Had that been a very short article it would have been much easier to use. We should be more free in chopping long articles apart rather than merging them into colossal unintelligible lists.

So I feel interface-wise many short articles is more beneficial to the reader than few LONG lists. This is a general statement not restricted to any topic.

Argument 2:
Thank you for your patience so far. In returning to the fiction related articles...

I have filtered the 'top 1000 most visited articles' list (WikiCharts — Top 1000 — 12/2007) with a focus on Naruto. There are many other fiction related articles 'infesting' the top 1000 such as articles on Bleach, Pokemon, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, and various TV shows.

I am merely highlighting Naruto related articles. I may have missed some articles as I did not spend too much time on this.


 * 3. Naruto
 * 24. Akatsuki (Naruto)
 * 45. List of Naruto characters
 * 43. List of Naruto: Shippūden episodes
 * 64. List of Konoha ninja
 * 89. Naruto Uzumaki
 * 172. Sasuke Uchiha
 * 184. List of major Konoha teams
 * 347. List of Naruto episodes
 * 516. Sakura Haruno
 * 527. Naruto geography
 * 550. Gaara
 * 565. Naruto: Shippūden the Movie
 * 658. Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (series)
 * 749. Jiraiya (Naruto)
 * 764. Jutsu (Naruto)
 * 881. List of Naruto villains
 * 948. Tsunade (Naruto)

There are 18 articles on the "top 1000" that relate to Naruto. I think it is safe to say our content on Naruto alone receives a very significant portion of our total traffic. So the answer to the question "who cares?" is "the reader cares".

We obviously have plenty of people reading our content on fiction related articles. A good question is how do we get them to start editing rather than just reading? Random quotations (Wikilawyering) to WP:EPSIDOE, WP:FICT, WP:NOT, WP:OMGAPOLICY seems to be alienating our users new and old. Newbie biting is particularly problematic especially on fiction related articles.

Any article that meets WP:EPISODE is either a good/featured article or is very close in being one. Article development is typically a long and painful process. We do not expect nor require a very high standard from articles in general upon their creation. People may suggest the WP:NOT in regarding the issue but they are also completely ignoring WP:STUB. Stub articles are not banned.

The fundamental problem in my view is that people are trying to treat Wikipedia like a finished product. All non-featured articles will be filtered out at the end of the production line. Consider how Veropedia works. Incomplete articles had always been plentiful. Out of the 2 million something articles we do not even have 2,000 featured articles. With a very rough calculation only 1 out of every 1000 of our articles satisfies guidelines in general. All others have something wrong with them (hence they are not featured). Even featured articles do not meet every guideline.

There is so much I want to say but, I will hold on to them for the sake of the length of this.

- White Cat

On Dec 22, 2007 9:36 PM, David Gerard < dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:

On 22/12/2007, Ken Arromdee < arromdee@rahul.net> wrote:

> In fact, I did say that. Nobody cared.

See, to anyone else, this might suggest that they were taking completely the wrong approach.

- d.

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