Why is it that...

[Rube E. Tewesday]

The quality of a Wikipedia entry is inversely proportional to the importance of its subject?

[OneCentStamp]

I think the more important the subject, the more you see edit wars and other such stuff going on, and those inevitably whittle away at the article rather than add content.

You can see the same thing going on with articles that may not be terribly important to the population at large, but which have a very devoted subculture. For example, I was looking at the article on anime just this morning, and it's a mess. You can tell someone recently went through and did the passive-aggressive Wiki source demand all over it.

[Exy]

I think the more important the subject, the more you see edit wars and other such stuff going on^{[Citation needed]}, and those inevitably whittle away at the article rather than add content^{[Citation needed]}.

You can see the same thing going on with articles that may not be terribly important to the population at large, but which have a very devoted subculture^{[Citation needed]}. For example, I was looking at the article on anime just this morning^{[Citation needed]}, and it's a mess^{[Citation needed]}. You can tell someone recently went through and did the passive-aggressive Wiki source demand all over it^{[Citation needed]}.

heh i crack me up

[OneCentStamp]

heh i[who?] crack me[weasel words] up

Oh yeah? :Shake:

[What Exit?]

...

You can see the same thing going on with articles that may not be terribly important to the population at large, but which have a very devoted subculture. For example, I was looking at the article on anime just this morning, and it's a mess. You can tell someone recently went through and did the passive-aggressive Wiki source demand all over it.

It is interesting that this does not seem to happen to the hundreds of Tolkien related entries. It says something about the fan base I guess. Maybe as we started arguing over Tolkien not only before Wiki but before WWW and/or there are too many really knowledgeable fans that know the minutia well.

[OneCentStamp]

It is interesting that this does not seem to happen to the hundreds of Tolkien related entries. It says something about the fan base I guess. Maybe as we started arguing over Tolkien not only before Wiki but before WWW and/or there are too many really knowledgeable fans that know the minutia well.

I think that's it. Tolkien has a huge and dedicated fandom, but it's an older and more conservative one. The fact that the professor himself has been dead a while, and the works in question are over half a century old, has also given plenty of time for the dust to settle, so to speak.

[Exy]

I haven't used Wikipedia a ton for fandom-type stuff (and I can't think of ever having done any contributions in that arena) but I've definitely read some articles on it and I'm not used to seeing a lot of Wikidrama infesting it. I know I've looked up stuff relating to Harry Potter, Buffy, and the Wheel of Time, all of which skew way younger than I would guess Tolkien's readership is, and still I'm not used to seeing a lot of infighting or passive-aggressive stuff on talk pages.

Maybe it's just anime people are weird. I've also seen a ton of that stuff on articles and talk pages relating to language politics. Now that's really an area in which a tiny number of passionate crazies can start some fights. But most Buffy fans seem to be content to just exhaustively describe every moment of every single episode rather than getting into fights about it.

[Fink-Nottle]

Maybe it's just anime people are weird.

Maybe? Maybe?