Friday, February 29, 2008

The Charms of Wikipedia - The New York Review of Books

Nicholson Baker writes about Wikipedia
It worked and grew because it tapped into the heretofore unmarshaled energies of the uncredentialed. The thesis procrastinators, the history buffs, the passionate fans of the alternate universes of Garth Nix, Robotech, Half-Life, P.G. Wodehouse, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charles Dickens, or Ultraman—all those people who hoped that their years of collecting comics or reading novels or staring at TV screens hadn't been a waste of time—would pour the fruits of their brains into Wikipedia, because Wikipedia added up to something.
Among the aspects discussed is the deletionism push, which I think the author dislikes as much as I do. I don't understand why people want to trim the fat from a resource like Wikipedia. It's far more useful when there's more information on more obscure subjects.

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