User:SoWhy/Not everyone is an artist

Featured content, good articles and "Did you know?"-appearances are often cited as evidence of a user's ability to create encyclopedic content. As such, people who are voting on whether a user should be granted further access as an administrator or bureaucrat, will cite such content credited to the user as a reason to support respectively the lack of it as a reason to oppose.

I have had the same kind of votes in my request for adminship and I have seen many people who have shared this experience. When considering my adminship, people suggested that I should get some of this content credited to my name to sway people who !vote in this kind of way to my side. And I tried...I really did. But I am not an artist.

What artists have to do with it?

I love to draw in real life. But the problem is...I am completely incompetent to really do so. I have often suffered the same problem: I picture something in my mind, with all details and shadows, proportions and colors almost perfectly looking. Masterpieces of virtual (i.e. imagined) art in my humble opinion. But once I pick up my pen and try to draw it, I can't. It will emerge distorted and corrupt, lines bent, colors too dark or too light, proportions completely incorrect, etc. No matter how great it looks in my mind, I am unable to transfer it to paper. My hand is not able to draw what my mind can imagine.

Relevance to Wikipedia

I have, after many tries that I will probably make again and again, discovered that it's quite the same on Wikipedia. While I can think about quite much good text and style, content and context, whenever I try to really write it, I will not create good content. My English is (not being a native speaker) not that good when it comes to writing prose, my sentences are awkward and I usually don't write as much as I thought I could. And I think I am not the only one.

Can we expect everyone to be able to paint?

I think some people will recognize their own situation in above paragraphs. More probably will if they just think about how many people would love to sing but simply are terrible at it (I'm one of them too). So we can assume that not everyone is able to create "good" content that awards FA, GA or DYK status even if they might like to be able to. And those people (like me) may be annoyed that this is the case but they should not focus their energy in the fruitless task of trying to create such content they know they are not able to. Instead, they can focus this energy on maintaining and appreciating this content.

Appreciating and maintaining art

A museum needs security personnel, it needs guides and visitors. An artist needs buyers or a mentor. Not everyone is or can be an artist and have their work showcased. Some people are happier to support those artists, instead of being them. Creating all the great content of this encyclopedia is indeed a wonderful job and everyone able to create it should be treated with admiration. But we need to remember that in order for everyone to be able to admire their art, there need to be people who protect and maintain it, and we should also treat the users who do this task treated with equal admiration. Artists and maintainers are sometimes the same but not always. But both are vitally important to the success of this project.

See also

• Wikipedia:Content awareness, not content creation