Wikipedia rejects
Wikipedia rocks. No doubt about it. Wikipedia stands for some powerful ideas. Crowds really do know more than experts. Self-governance by the world at large is possible. Knowledge is power. The best things in life are free.All that said, even some things don't make Wikipedia's cut. Wholly beneath the web's radar has emerged a very amusing and useful new site, the Wikipedia Knowledge Dump (or WikiDumper.Org for short). WikiDumper describes itself as "The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects," in evident pursuit of the maxim that "One man’s trash is another man’s treasure." If your favorite Wikipedia entry is in danger of elimination, never fear. Chief WikiDumper Cliff Pickover (ha ha) offers you and your entry a new chance at online life.
In the past two weeks, WikiDumper has rescued these gems from Wikipedia's ash heap and preserved them for posterity:
As far as I can tell, WikiDumper has been online only since the beginning of November 2006. I look forward to reading this site on a regular basis.
Editor's note: As part of the beta testing process at the Jurisdynamics Network, this item is being posted simultaneously at Jurisdynamics and at Law and Technology Theory.
4 Comments:
There's a great article on wikipedia in The Atlantic Monthly, which gets some narrative momentum as the author wonders if he'll be considered important enough for Wikipedia editors to permit his page entry to be maintained.
What I don't get is--why do they have to "weed people out"? Is storage space the issue? I just don't see why an encyclopedia aspiring to comprehensiveness, and unbound from the "dead trees" model of publishing, has to police its subject matter boundaries so vigorously.
The other quite fascinating aspect of Wikipedia for me is the aspiration to a "neutral viewpoint." It raises such interesting questions about what constitutes fact, and what opinion. I wonder if they'll borrow from defamation law in order to flesh out that distinction.
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So what is wrong with having a thing for clowns. We can learn much from them and it's not all sex.
Jeff,
The problem with the term coulrophilia, aside from its scandalousness, is that it doesn't appear to describe a clinically recognized paraphilia. It appears to be an obvious extension of the term coulrophobia, which is a recognized and much discussed condition.
Jim
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