SL Is Not Wikipedia / Discussion

Andy Pierce: I detest wikipedia. Wikipedia's neutral point of view (and other "strict guidelines") merely disguises that wikipedia is a popular opinion poll rather than the authoritative reference it makes itself out to be. Sensei's Library on the other hand doesn't even begin to pretend that it is anything other than a collection of people that, while trying their best, really don't have any professional-level knowledge of anything at all, really. Very refreshing. Useful too, when wielded correctly.

Isildur: In semi-defense of Wikipedia, trying to stay neutral is pretty much a necessary corollary of its basic goal of being an encyclopedia. The fact that some Wikipedia pages may fail to truly live up to that pledge of neutrality doesn't mean that the guideline itself is unreasonable (assuming one accepts wikipedia's goal of creating an encyclopedia via an open wiki as reasonable in the first place). Admittedly, however, if the neutrality failure rate there is high enough, it may call into question the very tenability of the entire idea of creating an encyclopedia via an open wiki; particularly since, as you point out, the overall neutral-sounding tone might lull users into into naively accepting some error-ridden or biased articles as authoritative. It's a tough dilemma, but luckily perhaps for SL, SL hasn't taken on the task of reconciling encyclopedia creation with the wiki medium, so yeah, we avoid all of that here. =)

unkx80: If anything, I don't really want to see mass deletionists on SL.

unkx80: On original research: I think the major reason is because the nature and specialization of SL's topics. The very nature of discussions of strategy games (e.g., Go) produces lots of original research. Hence, if you disallow any original research on such a specialized wiki, then SL will contain a lot less content. On the other hand, original research on SL has produced in a couple of SL pages that are cited from other scholarly articles.

tapir: Not to forget english go terms coined on SL.

Tapir: Since asked several times with Wikipedia reference we may add a short note concerning language here as well: "while written mostly in english SL does not prohibit contributions in other languages (e.g. ...)"

xela: I made a note to that effect at the bottom of the Wiki Etiquette page. Maybe it deserves to be mentioned elsewhere too.

Herman Hiddema: I have mention in in the page about Sensei's Library too, now. That page already contained a note about SL being in the English language, to which I have add a note that other languages are welcome.