Are we missing something here.
QUOTE
Consider the fictional characters of Pokémon, the Japanese game franchise with a huge global following, for example. Almost 500 of them have biographies on the English-language version of Wikipedia (the largest edition, with over 2m entries), with a level of detail that many real characters would envy. But search for biographies of the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and you would find no more than a dozen—and they are rather poorly edited.
Inclusionists believe that the disparity between Pokémon and Solidarity biographies would disappear by itself, if only Wikipedia loosened its relatively tight editorial control and allowed anyone to add articles about almost anything.
The article quotes this with apparent approval. Thus Wikipedia's rather patchy coverage of obscure medieval theologians as opposed to obscure Pokemon characters is due to narrow editing policies? Really?
I edited on the subject of obscure medieval theologians for some years and never noticed these narrow policies. Never had an article deleted. Quite the reverse, although I often felt my labours were regarded rather like the serious articles in Playboy, there to impart a patina of respectability to the real subject matter.
QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Mon 10th March 2008, 4:02pm)
For those USers not familiar with it,
The Economist is kinda like the UK equivalent of
The Harvard Lampoon.
Jonny
That is quite correct.
).