Wiki draft proposal

Roy C. Lackey · 15 May 2006, 18:17 · from 2006-May.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 13:17:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wiki draft proposal
Message-ID: <000a01c6784b$d9620d80$ac3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

maru wrote:
>>Well, why would we bother summarizing such posts into a wiki article if
they were so truly excreable?<<

Different people have differing thresholds of credulity. <g>

Is that how it's going to be done -- summarizing posts? Let me spell out my
concerns, which are primarily related to this list's archives.

Most posts have a narrow focus. Some people try harder than others; some
people have done their homework and some have not. The wheel is constantly
being reinvented. The sheer volume of the list archives is daunting to
consume, and few of us have eidetic memories. I read the archives before I
ever posted, but they were much smaller seven years ago. Trying to separate
the wheat from the chaff is very difficult, and it's not all the fault of
the search engine; it's the nature of the posts. Even trying to follow the
thread of a single subject line is often fruitless, because what started off
as topic A often devolves to topics D and E, which have little or nothing to
do with A.

There have been many thousands of posts made which contain a lot of
redundant verbiage. I don't see any practical way to sift out what may be
worth repeating (in regards to the Urth List) in another forum, but if it
isn't filtered some way then all you have is what already exists -- the
chaos that is the archives.

Who's going to do the summarizing? It seems to me that it would require a
hell of a lot of time and work. Are summarized theories harvested from the
archives going to do justice to the originals, and will the respective
authors be consulted beforehand?

-Roy

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