November 15, 2004
Wikipedia
After all that, Planet Earth (and other tourist traps) has its own Wikipedia entry over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_%28and_other_tourist_traps%29 . It's been an interesting week-plus, watching the Wikipedians debate the current webcomics standards for inclusion. It's obvious that the current standards at web comics are unneccessarily restrictive -- a new proposal for web comic inclusion is at Wikipedia's web comics talk page. Websnark's Eric Burns states: "The ultimate goal of Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion are to separate out those strips without note, commitment or worth, while highlighting those strips that possess note, commitment and worth." As it currently stands, the only thing that seems to warrant inclusion is popularity.
The one thing I really want to address is the superior attitude some Wikipedians seemed to posses towards "promotion". If anything, inclusion of webcomic entries will promote Wikipedia, not PE(aott) or other tenuously-notable comics. When looking at the referral logs since the PE(aott) entry was created, the majority of the traffic I've gotten from Wikipedia -- all but four visits -- came from the "Votes for Deletion" discussion. Going back to the original push for including more webcomics, Eric Burns writes that these articles will "draw more people to Wikipedia, get more people involved with Wikipedia, and the like." Has the promotion of Wikipedia by online comic strips worked? PE(aott) reader Ciaran H seems to think so: "I have been very interested in Wikipedia in general and am planning on being much more active in the future," he states in response to an established Wikipedian contesting his newly-created Wikipedia account.
So, to the question of more webcomic entries, I can only come away with this -- The Wikipedia will get more promotion from PE(aott) than PE(aott) will get from them.
Posted at November 15, 2004 11:32 AM
After all that, Planet Earth (and other tourist traps) has its own Wikipedia entry over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_%28and_other_tourist_traps%29 . It's been an interesting week-plus, watching the Wikipedians debate the current webcomics standards for inclusion. It's obvious that the current standards at web comics are unneccessarily restrictive -- a new proposal for web comic inclusion is at Wikipedia's web comics talk page. Websnark's Eric Burns states: "The ultimate goal of Wikipedia's guidelines for inclusion are to separate out those strips without note, commitment or worth, while highlighting those strips that possess note, commitment and worth." As it currently stands, the only thing that seems to warrant inclusion is popularity.
The one thing I really want to address is the superior attitude some Wikipedians seemed to posses towards "promotion". If anything, inclusion of webcomic entries will promote Wikipedia, not PE(aott) or other tenuously-notable comics. When looking at the referral logs since the PE(aott) entry was created, the majority of the traffic I've gotten from Wikipedia -- all but four visits -- came from the "Votes for Deletion" discussion. Going back to the original push for including more webcomics, Eric Burns writes that these articles will "draw more people to Wikipedia, get more people involved with Wikipedia, and the like." Has the promotion of Wikipedia by online comic strips worked? PE(aott) reader Ciaran H seems to think so: "I have been very interested in Wikipedia in general and am planning on being much more active in the future," he states in response to an established Wikipedian contesting his newly-created Wikipedia account.
So, to the question of more webcomic entries, I can only come away with this -- The Wikipedia will get more promotion from PE(aott) than PE(aott) will get from them.
Posted at November 15, 2004 11:32 AM