Thoughts on the recent continents stubs

I noticed these recently added article stubs about the various continents, and also noticed that they seem to generally be suggested to be removed. While I definitely agree that the stubs aren't necessarily neither well thought through nor well written, I'm not sure my view is that the pages need to be deleted outright. Definitely some stub and fix banners should be placed on those, but I get to thinking in terms of what might apply to tinWiki's area of focus, and of how a wiki works.

The problem with the stubs is, as I see it, not that Australia, South America and Asia don't apply to tinWiki's area of focus, but that the articles can seem to take just a general focus and talk about geography and that sort of thing. tinWiki is not Wikipedia, and is not a general encyclopedia. But I do believe lots of things that tinWiki is exactly about, relate fairly heavily, and in a number of ways, to these continents. That doesn't mean that long geography articles have any place in tinWiki, but it might mean that correctly focused and appropriately sized articles are perhaps warranted for these geography related topics; South America, for example, is home to very interesting history and mythology that has a lot to do with several of the topics that are right in tinWiki's center of attention, and so, from that point of view, I do think it might be nice to be able to point to an article that breifly describes what this continent is, perhaps with some maps and pictures and a little history presentation, and a short list of the tinWiki type issues that relate to that continent.

As I see it, the only important thing is to build from the core, to keep and maintain the focus and core that tinWiki is supposed to have. It's possible to 'scale' the same type of encyclopedia, like that, so that a tinWiki with ten articles can be recognized as the same, good old tinWiki when it has 10,000 articles.

Things can change, even if it's at the same place, has the same name, and the same size. Things can change if they move, change name and change size. But things can also stay true, as they say, to what they are even if they grow considerably. That's what I myself wish to see happen to tinWiki. I want there to be 10,000 articles or more, and that tinWiki, still, keeps being precisely tinWiki. That means keeping the focus, the 'formula', and, while keeping that same perspective and focus and area of interest, growing and growing from the one, true 'center' of tinWiki. Then, when tinWiki has all these thousands of articles, will tinWiki still not be, or want to be, any wannabe mini Wikipedia, but will be tinWiki, and as tinWiki it will, I'm pretty sure, have lots of articles whose topics it will have been discovered along the way are actually related to UFOs, lost civilizations, secret societies, conspiracy theories, and all those 'unknown' type topics that I'd say are like one of those ice bergs that are 90% below the surface, in the sense that these topics aren't very visible in everyday society or in the media, but that these topics are in reallity a much more relevant part of what affects humans and what humans are faced with in various ways, than what one would think from the amount of attention these topics get in everyday life. The unknown is, of course, by definition outside of that which most people like to focus very much on, but that doesn't mean these topics are small and insignificant, it may just mean that the present knowledge is somewhat small.

Anyway, I think that articles shouldn't be present if their very topic at the present will move tinWiki's balance as an encyclopedia away from what it is supposed to be, or should be written in ways that in that same way drag and tilt focus and attention elsewhere than what tinWiki is about. I'm not really sure whether these continent stubs do that right now. Can anyone see any way to 'tinWiki-fy' their content?...

These are just some thoughts, anyway, and the thoughts are perhaps just as much about the general topic of size, or number of articles, and focus, in general, as they are about the specific article stubs in question.

Optimist


edit: spelling in the title...

[edit on 14-9-2008 by Optimist]

I agree with you very much on the subject of the continents having pages about them. I admit when the the stubs first popped up a couple of weeks ago my impulse was to nominate the articles for deltion. However when I saw the article on Antartica I stopped myself as a little lightbulb went off in my head. Because it occured to me at that point that there are a few very "tinWiki" oriented subjects that can be written about that take place in Antartica. As you pointed out is the case with South America, which \can then be generally apple\ied to the rest of the continents.

Thats not too say we want to know about ice cube production per say, but I think some generic information is warranted. I would think, off of the top of my head, that the history of the continent would be pertinent. A nice image of the land mass would nicely accompany the article as well. I do support what you say Optimist, the articles do not need to be long.

I was one of the first to call for having these pages deleted, but if you take a look at "Antarctica" it became a pretty good reference page after a few edits.
tinwiki.org...

I'm not entirely sure these are tinWiki material, but with some additional links and cross referencing to other articles within ATS and tinWiki I think they could become an integral part of the articles included in tinWiki.

I agree with whats already been said: at first I thought, "what the heck are these doing here? What's "alternative" about the continents?" And they do need fixing and destubifying. But they could also be a really useful way to organize articles.

I'm thinking that in addition to things like geographical, political, ecological, and population data each could have a description of paranormal/UFO/religious/etc topics associated with that area of the world and a list of links to other tinWiki articles that are about things that happened there.

I've found a good way to incorporate these articles as links to the "Earth" article.
tinwiki.org...

As they fill in with additional edits they become a complete reference to the planet.
You'll notice I'm linking countries as well.

How far do you want to take this ?

I'm trying to fill in these continents as best I can so they're not stubs, but do you think each continent deserves a brief section on each country within the continent ?

I notice an article on Human Sacrifice that lists many countries that could be linked as reference material, and there are separate pages for the USA and China. I'd like to cross reference all of these in some way.

Is it a benefit to tinWiki to make pages for each country or even have them as subsections of continents ?

Let me know.

Thanks
anx........


EDIT: Just another thought.
Strange occurrences such as UFO sightings, unknown beasts, ghosts, etc, could also be linked to country pages.

[edit on 26/9/2008 by anxietydisorder]