Peter Damian writes:

It strikes me that it is a topic worthy of discussion and should not be buried.

So, is "culture" important, and are video games "culture"?

What should be in an encyclopedia is stuff likely to be still of interest in a few years time. It is likely that people will still be reading a great novel or even watching a great film for many decades. A bridge may be there for the next century or more. Who will be playing todays video games in ten years time? Yes lets have a brief mention of the most popular ones for the archives but not dozens of long articles on them.

My opinion has already been given on the other thread; while yes, a lot of them are obscure and there's no need to cover all of them (any more than there's a need to cover every band) very successful videogames like Tomb Raider or Pac Man are just as culturally significant as best-selling movies, albums or books. Because it's "a kid thing", I'm not sure all adults really appreciate just how much of an impact these things have, and just how big an industry it is (if ColScott is about he might be able to give some firm figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are cases where the spin-off game earns more than the original movie).

the merchandising and game spinoffs from movies have the potential to earn alot more - I think it runs into billions with Star WArs meorabilia, and I think Pokemon would be much larger than the TV rights and movies.
Cas

So far: longevity vs. money makes the world go around... I think we need to dig a little deeper yet.

The trouble with any current pop culture, is that there is little likelihood of us knowing which are keepers and which are doomed to be just a footnote of some obscure fad. Everyone goes on about Van Gogh only selling one painting, but he had many admirers amongst fellow artists. Could anyone seriously have believed that the Velvet Underground would still be a reference point 40 years on, and that bands who sold more copies of a minor hit than their entire output when they folded in the 70's would only be names on some chart archive?

Should WP, another fad which may not last, continue into the coming decades they are going to be faced with a decision of what to do with so many of their old pop culture articles that have less than one hit a day - because even with ever expanding memory, there will be a drain on resources for hosting all that content - when they have no idea which of them will truly be forgotten in a century, and which ones will have a second life as an icon or influence of a major movement.

In one hundred years you may be surprised to find that "Tron", rather than Star Wars, is decreed as the film which changed the world of movie making. You just cannot tell with pop culture.

So that deals with pop culture. But surely, the criteria of "What is useful human* knowledge to document?" is more than a choice between history and fan-cruft?

That is the simple question to which the answer needs to be aware of the various why's and wherefores of what knowledge might be useful. Although we take the piss, the dusty child in Africa™ test would soon get rid of 90% of the drivel in Wikipedia. Producing articles might be free, but in a hard life where time and necessities are hard won, I can't see the DCIA really being that interested in The Life and Times of Donkey Kong.

Still, perhaps that is the oddity of the modern world. Once you have survival, is anything else important, or is that just a facet of the culture of the day?



* Just in case there are any ultra-inclusionists reading

The problem with video game related articles isn't that video games aren't noteworthy cultural items; many are worth an article. Rather, the problem is the intensely fancrufty detail that the articles get into, often splitting into dozens of subpages or more.

Compare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gat...ajor_characters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_cha...he_Mario_series

Yes, Wikipedia has ten times as much detail on "Professor E. Gadd" than it does on the protagonist of Gatsby.

Write for your audience, imo

No, reach out and raise your audience to a higher level. Pandering is for the lazy and (dare I say it) the apathetic.

So write it. I get a bit sick ad tired of all the complainers (usually along the deletion-minded) who moan about the popular culture material. Many contribute little in the way of material themselves. Furthermore I highly doubt that the editors that know, love and write about 150 different pokemon are, upon thinking about it, going to go and expound upon Marcel Proust or thermodynamics.

Erm, my point wasn't that Gatsby wasn't covered enough, but that the amount of material on "Professor E. Gadd" and friends — pretty much all a rehashing of the video games' story — was overly excessive. To wit:

"Rosalina wears a silver crown, has pale blonde hair with a side-fringe, a light blue dress with three frills, star earrings, a star pendant, nail polish, and carries a star wand".

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...

Hmmm, so let's look at page views - we have this for the Mario characters, and this for the Gatsby. Mario (series) nets us this - lots of views all round. Pretty healthy viewing all round. Again, much of this is important to all sorts of people and I am unimpressed with arbitary rules on what is and isn't 'encyclopedic'

...actually proust gets a fwe views as well here

If you added some encyclopedic hardcore porn pics to the sex related articles just think of all the page views you'd get then.

...and they definitely wouldn't be holding candles then I suppose

Okay, Mr. Liber, so you think an "encyclopedia" is a popularity contest?

Should all printed encyclopedias toss out the Proust and the Fitzgerald and all the boring
old stuff, because young people don't care about old stuff?

Encyclopedias talk about video games and anime and Rockstar Energy Drink and whatever
is popular this year. Is that right?

Mr. Liber, the more of your comments I read, and with all due respect,
the more I think you're totally barmy. As barmy as the huge fancruftpedia
you're attempting to oversee.

We've been over the fancruftyness of Wikipedia before. It's an established
truth that it contains oceans of useless pop-culture trivia, is everyone agreed?
(Do I need to link to past discussions on this issue?.....)

What is with you, sir? Are you like Carcharoth, so obsessed with Tolkein or what-have-you,
that you really can't imagine what that phrase "general knowledge" actually means?

It means only what YOU care about, as you hide in your nerdy dungeon, isn't it?

Did you ever see the movie Idiocracy, Mr. Liber?
Perhaps (again with all due respect) you should.
It describes a world run by fools with adolescent, impulsive personalities.

Do you want to toss out out all the useful knowledge, and let teenagers determine
what they want to do the rest of their lives? Turn everything into a popularity contest?
If a subject is too boring, kill it? Dude, screw this calculus and Latin, let's get stoned
and play Half-Life until we get kicked out of college!!

That is an Idiocracy world. You would not enjoy living in it.

I disagree. Things can be of archival and retrospective interest, even if that's their only drawcard. Wikipedia is a compendium of all knowledge, and it seeks to document everything. Things can be notable and be of only ephemeral interest. After all, whose place is it to predict what will and won't be of interest in twenty years' time? Certainly not Wikipedia's.

I was actually at the point of despair that nobody seemed capable of challenging this immersion into the belief of encyclopedias as popularity contests. If this is thread is representative of the current level of insight into the purpose of knowledge amongst WRers, then I truly despair of Wikipedians divining an appropriate purpose to their travails.

Heck no, I am not talking about throwing the other stuff out - we can have it all no problems, plenty of room in the pool

Hmm I'll check out this idiocracy. Looks like a cool movie from what I can tell - thanks for the tip.

What I meant to add was that I agree with you about dumbing down - one of the reasons I edit is to upscale and improve articles so that people actually read and take in more.

e.g. a common bird 'round where I live is the Australian Magpie. Most bird guidebooks are pretty perfunctory with ID and some call notes etc. There is a shitload of fascinating research into these critters which I (and I hope others) find fascinating. Similarly Superb Fairy-wren.

I embellished the behaviour and other sections of these articles - I hope that folks read them and next time they see the little critters they remember some of the stuff they read and have an increased level of understanding. There are numerous other examples of pages like this. i do hope folks in london will recall the Battersea Bridge article next time they cross it or see it. Irid/Eva has done a great job.

One of the tragedies of mass media is its level of facile-ness. All folks are much smarter than the tripe that is served up much of the time and WP is one place which can help. I have been involved in article writing in FA and GA areas and my experience over most of that time has been great.
Cas

Two distinct questions.

1. Which this thread began with. Why are museums and Latin and history and the poetry of Keats more important than, say, a video game, Pokemon or 90's a list of 90's albums. Or are they more important? Difficult question indeed. A lot of people and would deny that they are. According to some people, 'great' poets like Keats, philosophers like Aristotle, composers like Beethoven are simply dead white, Western men whose works represent Western hegemony and imperialism. There is NO more 'value' to their works than yesterday's newspaper, or a Big Mac. I don't really know how to answer this question. I happen to regard Latin and the poetry of Keats as of more worth than a Big Mac. I don't think it is because of their longevity. Rather, their longevity is evidence of a quality they possess that people have recognised through time, which becomes obvious through time, and which is often hard to spot in the present. The music of Chopin (which cleverly adapted popular music of the time such as Mazurkas and waltzes) was probably not thought as enduring at the time. Schubert had a similar problem - his music was not taken seriously until the twentieth century.

2. The second question is whether, assuming that 'high culture' is in fact what its name suggests, and is intrinsically more valuable than Big macs, the balance of material in an encyclopedia should reflect that. This is where I get irritated by people like Casliber, who writes "I get a bit sick ad tired of all the complainers (usually along the deletion-minded) who moan about the popular culture material. " This confuses the fact that Wikipedia does have a much much higher coverage of popular material, with the question of whether that should be the case. The fact that he mentions 'deletionism' is interesting - I was brought up in the school that your best friend is the wastepaper basket, that a writer should turn over half a library in order to produce a single page. It is often argued that we live in a digital age where storage is cheap. Wrong. Each encyclopedia article should summarise the material it covers in a way that gives the reader a balanced view of the subject, rather than a list of things that were already there (we have Google for that). Moreover, it should balance all the articles in such a way as to indicate the relative importance of each subject. Thus, Ayn Rand should not received as much coverage of Aristotle (even though, in fact, she does).

But at what point does Wikipedia cease becoming an encyclopedia and start becoming a dumping ground for junk? Is Encyclopedia Brittanica publishing articles about "1 vs. 100"? Serious reference sources know where to draw the line. Wikipedia is not an online encyclopedia -- it is an online trivia site.

While an encyclopedia serves to speed up the learning of a consumer reading it, yhe encyclopedia construction process serves a substantially different purpose for those engaged in its protracted construction.

The learning curve of the community engaged in building Wikipedia are not on a fast track (low drama) learning curve. Rather they are on a high-drama roller coaster ride of fits and starts that comes from learning difficult elements of project management the hard way.

I despair that very many of them will emerge from the process better educated and unscathed from the long-lasting emotional and psychological wounds of becoming ensnared in a dysfunctional and abusive culture.

You mean.....junk like this?

How about this? Or this?

Speaking of Pokemon.....did you know that Wikipedia now has a complete list of all 493 Pokemon species?

Why is this crap on Wikipedia? If you wanted to learn about Regigigas, there's a perfectly good Pokemon wiki to waste your time on.

And lest you think WP is mostly a cruft-fest for nerdy subjects, let's talk about sports.

Sounds like Natural Selection in action - traditionally encyclopedia's were models of what we were supposed to find ''important''; lists of our rulers, lists of rulers of nations of long ago, lists of animals and their names in the language of some rulers of nations long ago, music that encyclopedia writers and publishing houses like, poetry that writers and publishers like, poetry from nations of long ago, the names of chemicals - including their names in the language of nations from long ago, names of countries and their geographical features (and their major exports) and numbers of populations... I mean, I actually was a kid who liked reading encyclopedia's (about aeroplanes, automobiles and those electronically amplified guitars played by barbarians...) but for the vast majority of the learning population - at which encyclopedia's are directed, since the older ones read more specialised reference books - an encyclopedia was a compodium of boring shit with a few drawings of naked people if you were lucky.

Wikipedia is full of fun facts of fancruft, because the writers are interested in such stuff and so is most of the readership. It gets all those very many hits because people want to read a hopefully referenced section about the special powers that some manga hero gets when they twist the stone on their ring... There is just the possibility, after they read it and see what else the site has to offer, that they find one of the "more worthy" articles and read it and (you never know) find they quite liked what they read and decide to find out more about it.

In the meantime, natural selection decrees that some articles built upon fleeting enthusiasm wither and die, while others endure and a few slowly build into major pieces - and at the same time other transient articles based around what is selling and what is fashionable are created to snare more enquiring minds, some of whom will stay around long enough to allow other information to seep into their consciousness.

What I object to most is people whose sole occupation on wikipedia appears to be to kick other people's sandcastles over - that is, those who do very little editing or mainspace contributions themselves but are quite vocal in tagging or nominating for deletion other peoples material - it seems somewhat antithetical to egalitarian editing. I agree alot of subjects could be covered in more detail and that many geeky things have gotten a whopping head start (eg RPGs, computer, manga etc.), it doesn't mean you need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Cas

Well, then why don't you do something about such people? Oh, I forgot-- you're hamstrung by the rules of wikipedia which demand that things be given coverage in proportion to their representation in published literature. So tragic for people who are editing on the basis of interest and knowledge, and not what's in fashion. Deletionists don't have to guess about what will stand the test of time-- that would be original research or NOTCRYSTALBALL. They can just wipe out whatever they're interested in, on the basis that few other people are interested, either. There's a reason why I can't find NOT:PHILISTINES.

I can imagine a WP bio entry for Elizabeth Barrett Browning after her death, in which somebody has put a redlink to [[Robert Browning]], new widower, who was known by a few people to dabble privately at poetry himself. And the edit war about whether he's notable enough even to deserve a redlink. Which at the time, he probably was not. As silly as redlinking the second wife of Percy Shelley just after they were married. What, are you trying to cause some kind of scandle by suggesting there might one day be a bio on the teenage wife of this famous man, who herself is surely a not-notable, and will no doubt remain so? (Actually that's a valid BLP issue, but there are others involving other kinds of info, than aren't.)

You've given many other examples of the strange things that the filter of time does. It can all be re-created when the work becomes famous, but in the meantime, what do you lose? A lot, since time is a one-way sieve. Another thing you lose may be the editor himself/herself, who learns that he can have his own work kicked over, out of spite, by those who are protected by a long laundry list of institutional shields from OTHERSTUFFEXISTS to POINT to WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

However, I will say that, insofar as being editied, there does exist some stuff infuriating stuff about WP editing that is truly timeless, and not unique to WP. William Faulkner used to complain, after he got his manuscripts back all blue-lined from this publisher, that it seemed to be the policy at Random House to hire new English Lit graduates just out of Vassar as copy editors, who seemed to think it was their job to teach him how to use punctuation correctly.

I made a proposal (I think) some time about the second TV episodes arb case that all editors should have a proportion of mainspace additions to offset editors that solely tagged, commented or deleted others' contributions...but it went down like a lead balloon. Oh well.

I have also tried sourcing material from time to time, although a deletion sword of Damocles is somewhat of a disincentive I must admit....

Should add that one to perennial. I've tried tagging the personal work of RfD Nazis to see how THEY like it, and only run afoul of POINT. See what I mean?


Particularly as you realize it shouldn't exist at all, except with BLP and copyright vio questions. Who the hell cares? Or should? NOT:PAPER. One more NOT thing which is exactly opposite to the reality, since in RfD debates everybody acts just as though WP were wheezing like a 386 machine trying to run Windoz Vista.

A few NOTs seem to be missing:

WP:FAIR
WP:INTEGRITY
WP:EMPATHY
WP:FORWARDLOOKING
WP:EXPERIMENTALIST (also WP:LETSTRYIT)
WP:OPENMINDED
WP:JIMBOADMITSERROR

On the last one, he did once prepare to do so, but found out that he had been mistaken about being mistaken, so there was no need.

There are a number of printed television encyclopedias, however, which contain such articles. Wikipedia is supposed to incorporate elements of both general and specialized encyclopedias. I'm not arguing that Wikipedia isn't a trivia magnet; I'm just saying that a question or comment limiting what Wikipedia should include to what Encyclopedia Britannica publishes doesn't make sense, since content even in general-purpose encyclopedias varies between publishers. Drawing the line at what EB contains means excluding content used in other encyclopedias.

For example, I don't see an article in EB for the proposed state of Jefferson (1915), but my edition of World Book has an article; even WP discusses it here. Similarly, the Kanopolis Dam has an article in WBE; as does Patrick Kerwin, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (Wikipedia article on Patrick Kerwin). WBE has an article on rabbi and author Abba Hillel Silver, as does Wikipedia. EB has no articles on any of these, that I could find.

No, the "Does EB have an article on...?" test doesn't really work very well in practice. EB misses too many things included in other encyclopedias, even other traditional encyclopedias. Just as other encyclopedias miss things included in EB. It's best not to limit the test to one encyclopedia, and it's probably not useful to say that since EB doesn't have it, it's not worth including.

Even wikidiots wouldnt be that stupid. Browning became famous enough after the publication of Sordello.

Obviously you dont start a BLP on every newborn baby in case they become notable. As and when she became notable she deserved an article.

The main problem with BLPs is that a high proportion are about people who dont deserve an article but are COATRACKs or just there to be pilloried.

You're right. Let's leave the 30,000 people who read the article in the last 45 days left wanting in exchange your lofty ideals about what an encyclopedia should be.

If you are going to drop the value of content in order to appeal to a low common denominator, you will sacrifice quality for the sake of commerce. The challenge is not bringing eyeballs to a web site (any idiot can do that -- hell, even Xenocidic.com has readers), but bringing credibility to the site. As Wikipedia evolves (devolves?) into a grab-bag of trivia and cruft, whatever pretensions it may have as a serious educational resource evaporates. What's left is not the be-all/end-all destination for those seeking high-quality work by dedicated scholars, but an online edition of Trivial Pursuit run by ADHD-afflicted teenagers pushing block buttons.

I think that Jimbo did admit error, once in his Wikipedia life.

Although, he left a lot of wiggle room regarding the case of JzG's plagiarism and cover-up of my original creative output, since nearly a year's time wasn't sufficient for him to get "the details of which I don't fully remember or understand at the moment".