[ghaff]

We're basically into the deletionist vs. inclusionist debate that is at least somewhat orthogonal to what laypeople think of as notability. Is a Pokemon character notable. Not really?? But because of the enthusiastic fan base tons have been written about them.

On the other hand, whether you're talking open source projects beyond the big names, corporate executives, or just people who are reasonably well known within fairly large communities, there just isn't a lot of independently sourced published material about them, especially in mainstream pubs--which (somewhat both understandably and ironically) Wikipedia tends to prefer. You even have people with tons of hits on Google but there isn't a ton of info about them online.

[tptacek]

What "debate"? This isn't a live debate. There is a faction of people, some of whom are involved with Wikipedia, that want it to be something other than a tertiary-source encyclopedia, just like there are people who want to be able to write blog posts as Stack Overflow comments. It's true that they will never stop advocating for these changes, but there's no evidence that the projects themselves are going to cave.

[ghaff]

Maybe it's not a debate so much as a tension--and it's a real one. Personally, I haven't contributed anything to Wikipedia in years. It's useful, I see its flaws, but I certainly don't care enough to push on it for the most part.

[tptacek]

I'm exactly the same way. For instance: I did some writing about macOS security in the macOS articles, way back when, and most of it got struck because I couldn't cite it properly. It was frustrating to write a straightforward statement, like "the macOS Seatbelt sandboxing mechanism uses s-expressions", and have it get struck.

But I came quickly to realize the project was right. Without a reliable secondary source, I was effectively conducting research in the pages of the encyclopedia. What I learned from that was: I shouldn't be writing encyclopedia articles; the technical writing I do tends not to be tertiary.

It's fine – good, in fact – if most people don't write much in Wikipedia. It's its own special thing. You can't argue with its success: it might be the most successful project in the history of the Internet, and a long-term contender for one of the most successful volunteer knowledge projects ever.

[lonelappde]

Th number of wigglypuff fans exceeds the number of Arrow fans by at least 10x. And the article is higher quality.