Gentle spiders, I'm a little surprised by the apparent lack of response to my earlier invitation to help with the Wikipedia lace information. Perhaps it was overlooked in a flurry of other information, or perhaps it was insufficiently explanatory? I do think this community is a perfect resource for this project--and also that the project is perfect for this community! If the issue is unfamiliarity with Wikipedia, I hope my second try at explaining is clearer: Wikipedia is a project to create a collaborative on-line encyclopedia. The articles are written and/or changed by anyone volunteering to do so. This has disadvantages: vandalism, point-of-view disagreements, and incorrect information due to ignorance. The Wikipedia community believes these are outweighed by the advantages of the widest possible collaboration. I often find good Wikipedia articles to be at the very least good starting points for research, easier and often more reliable than a general web search. Arachne is rather similar in that anyone can chime in with an opinion when a question is asked; sometimes, a single answer is comprehensive--but more often, the flurry of responses _in total_ is better than any single response. Similarly, the more people chime in on the Wikipedia lace articles, the more comprehensive they will be, and the more useful the resource. Since Wikipedia articles are extensively cross-linked, people researching other topics may well be led to some lace article or other, helping to raise awareness about lace in the world at large. For examples of lace articles, many of which need lots of improvement, and others of which are pretty good, but can always be improved, consider the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantilly_lace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filet_lace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbin_lace You can link to others, including some which don't yet have any content, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiproject_Lace (The list of lace types (see the template at the bottom of the Lace project page) I created itself needs work; it isn't at all comprehensive, and I'd sure like some other opinions on categorization.) I think if you check out this project, you'll see that there's a lot of work to be done--but the more people to help, the faster it will grow. I should perhaps emphasize that you don't necessarily need to register to help out. You can edit pages without registering, or, if you have a suggestion but you really don't want to edit yourself, you can just post suggestions on the "talk" tab of the project page (or the "talk" tab of any specific lace page). If you'd like to edit something but you're not sure how, feel free to ask. Don't worry about doing everything perfectly; one of the advantages of collaboration is having lots of help cleaning up errors small and large! If you have any other questions, please ask! If I'm way off-base, and the deafening silence that followed my earlier posting has another reason, would someone be so kind as to gently enlighten me? Thanks! Julie E. in Seattle
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