I don't even know if I'd consider it Lucas Bashing. I don't really like that term. I love George Lucas. He may have ruined his movies in my eyes but he certainly gave me a lot of great work to admire throughout my childhood and early adult years.
I don't like the term either. George Lucas is a bit like a big brother to me. When I was growing up he was the coolest big brother you could have. By the time I'd finished puberty, I realized he made mistakes (Ewoks, anyone?), but still thought his movies excellent. Now, as an adult, I can recognize he isn't perfect, surrounds himself with yes-men, has a big ego, questionable judgment and digs his heals in when he makes mistakes. But he did make my childhood infinitely richer, and he'll always have my thanks for that.
At school he inspired a big group of us to go off and make movies. We were 16 years old, read books on film making and there were 4 or 5 film interchanging production groups active at our school. I've still got many of the scripts. Some of the guys were very good, and just checking I found one them in IMDB(!) I went into CGI, because I figured films and computers would one day merge. Lucas was an inspiration to many. And that's just my school!
Given that, it sucks that any criticism automatically becomes "Lucas Bashing".
I agree but I don't know if there's any room to have criticisms in wiki entries. You could link to my rant about Bob Dylan in his wiki entry but that wouldn't do any good. Linking to an article critical of a piece of work doesn't really belong in wiki. Wiki should be reserved for cataloging information about a subject.
Wiki is supposed to tell both sides, including criticism. If you look at an article and it says nothing bad about it at all, you're coming away with an incorrect perspective. "Hey I looked this thing up on Wiki and it's *cooool!*" Many articles handle this by having a controversy/criticism subheading written in as neutral a tone as possible. If it's more contentious, they split it entirely. Only know of this for [[Star Wars]] and [[Microsoft]].
They *do* try and include criticism in the [[Star Wars]] entry, they just don't do a very good job at it ;-). You are supposed to cite a reference for everything you say in Wiki, and pretty much all of the [[Star Wars]] criticisms are fleeting and uncited (as in "citation needed"). They could use RTHSW because you *do* break it down. It isn't "Don't see this movie it sucks". You actually analyse it with an incredible amount of detail. Agree there's not point linking to rants or "this sucks" web pages. Those add nothing. No more than "this is greeeeeat!" web pages either. (Hello TheForce.Net).
I think a large number of people do it well, but you'll always have a group that thinks they're the king of the world rather than just an admin on Wikipedia.
Probably more a reflection on the people editing an article than Wiki itself. I've done edits to anime and music articles. Anime in particular people have no problem loving an anime but still laughing at its faults. (Evangelion: "So why is a secret agent taking four school kids on a mission with her?") But for some reason, with Star Wars (and I guess Star Trek) you have fans that have some sort of mental condition; some bizarre manifestation of primitive group bonding and being able to feel you are important.
I think that some sections (Star Wars is probably a great example) lend themselves a little more to being run by people in this category for some reason.
They're very up themselves. If you saw the talk page, their argument was (1) the guy who deleted the link is a *WIKIPEDIA ADMINISTRATOR* and so doesn't need to justify himself to the likes of you, (2) I have been editing for years, but your account is only two weeks old, (3) I am *A STAFF MEMBER* of TheForce.Net, which HAS AN ASSOCIATION with LucasFilm. (I think he means Ben Burtt nearly ran over him in a parking lot once :-) Told him his opinion doesn't count an iota more or less than any other fan, or for that matter anyone else who has seen the films and wants to contribute.
You'll never change their minds of course. ===> Really: It's like arguing Religion. <====
This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 26 January 2007 - 08:39 PM