Way Cool Wikipedia Pages
editRarely contributing
editWhen Wikipedia first showed up on my radar, I contributed a fair bit in the areas I thought I could be useful. Since then, quite a few images I took myself or otherwise owned and contributed have been deleted for absurd reasons; I'm certainly not going to do the same work twice, and I *really* resent having my time wasted.
I fully understand that Wikipedia is a community effort. However it has gone quite a distance in an extremely restrictive direction and I'm not really that interested in following along.
I do wish those remaining enthusiasts good luck with all this; but for my part, I am sorry to see such a beautiful and open idea become so restrictive and don't think it merits much support (and particularly monetary support -- when I see wikipedia begging for money, I just shake my head.)
Perhaps someone will start over without all the restrictions. If so, I'd be much more interested.
IMHO, the coolest thing about wikipedia was the ease of contributing and the certainty that the contribution would remain unless someone actually disagreed with what was provided.
Without those things, Wikipedia has lost the feel of the original web and the open community. Again IMHO, Wikipedia can never be what it seems to want to be now, which is a reliable and highly accurate reference tool; and it is no longer what made it worthy in the first place, which was an open, interesting and free-for-all compendium of anecdotal information sourced by anyone and everyone. Oops.
Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher (Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78) had it right, no matter if the author actually meant it to be taken as written or not: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Perhaps then we should turn our attention to the editors.