I'm not sure this changes my point. If Britannica had adapted to the proliferation of personal computing and portable media by releasing a comprehensive, easy-to-use and widely advertised electronic edition before Microsoft managed to release Encarta, they may have remained on top into the 21st century. Similarly, if they had jumped on the Wiki bandwagon a little later, they may have further adapted and remained on top for several more decades. Again, this was not my point. We should not invest in few technologies and hope they win out, we should spread our bets. We should adopt and adapt to new technologies as soon as they appear. We shouldn't be afraid to change; Britannica were and they are dead. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

On 7/18/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote: "It's not the technology. It's the social structure, stupid". Although Wikipedia is about building an encyclopedia and not about a building a community, without our social structure our project could not be a success. Wiki does a lot in facilitating our activity, but to suggest that Britannica would have had an increased lifetime merely by adopting Wiki technology is somewhat laughable. There is always the chance that they'll adapt... I'm not expecting them to go away any time soon.. It's still a useful resource, is so much as something which isn't instantly available to more than an infinitesimal fraction of the world can be... [snip] To add some contrast: Just because you die out without some changes, does not mean all changes should be accepted. In biology we find that most mutations are harmful. Because of the poor resource availability to cost ratio our project is sorely lacking alternative solutions on the development side. This results in an inability to produce a 'survival of the fittest' environment for software features. I am concerned that this is a significant risk. I can't suggest a real solution to this today, but I think that one of the things we already to today helps the situation somewhat: do as much as possible without modifying Mediawiki. And with bots, toolserver, templates, manual, and quasi-manual processes... we're already doing that. I'm wary of software which grants someone who merely has working code the ability to control long term direction of the project. Enwiki folks are very concerned about the consolidation of 'power' that comes from combining a bcrat and a arbcom member in one usrs.... Good thing that developers are under the radar, because with the ability to make wide scale decisions without consensus that comes from a patch is pretty much unparalleled. But I suppose thats why we don't have any developers on the Wikimedia Foundation board.

On 7/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill(a)gmail.com> wrote: The number of unsucessful and amazingly unsuccessful wiki's implies that there is secret sauce involved, and that the secret sauce isn't the mere use of Wiki technology. It is by no means a given that britannica could have been successful simply by letting anyone edit as there have been failures among sites which have done exactly that. It doesn't change that fact that there are additions which can't be simply done outside of mediawiki core (due to schema change requirements, and needing hooks in places we don't provide them). There is no 1:1 competition for "Semantic MediaWiki" that I'm aware of... In general users are left to take or leave software features. I'm not whining about it, because I don't see how we can avoid it... we're already doing a great job being modular. It's just something that we should be aware of... What we have works, in part because Brion is a great gatekeeper, but it's not a competative model and I'm very glad we haven't enabled most of the extensions out there... a fair number of them are pretty terrible. (They scratched the authors itch, but thats as far as many go).

The idea that a Wikipedian's work will change and adapt--will be immortal--is quite wonderful. The fact that they are codifying knowledge freely so that it can be reused is very satisfying. I was made aware of the whole FLOSS movement because I became a Wikipedian (I did not become a Wikipedian because I was a member of the FLOSS community). Again, I expect this is the case with most users. I was initially attracted by the freedom to edit and the projects ability to grow (reuse of our work by others as a result of free licensing is an extension of this). I can't say whether I'd still be editing if this were a proprietary project, probably not (I now strongly believe in FLOSS principles and can't envisage giving my free time to something proprietary, so I may be biased). As for those who are less philosophical, I think there would be enough of them to have made a proprietary Wikipedia successful (in the absence of a free alternative, which would be more attractive to most). -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Gregory Maxwell wrote: It's also the ability to live with paradox. In its short life Wikipedia has aged dramatically. It has already made many fundamental decisions that limit its future options. Take verifiability as an example. This concept is a direct response to repeated complaints from the outside world that Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information. From a strictly objective perspective verifiability is a good thing, but it still has a cost. It leads to a situation where the game is taken ove by rules lawyers who can convince the other players that order is good. This makes it very difficult for the Calvinball player to introduce a new rule into the existing game. Instead, his new rule involves starting a new game. The 18th century Calvinball players that set up Britannica established the seeds of their own destruction when they failed to account for the internet; that they were unaware of the internet at the time is irrelevant. No, I would venture to say that most mutations are inconsequential. Quite the contrary. If you can't come up with the resources you are not the fittest. Which only proves my point that most biological mutations are inconsequential. Your examples reflect only mere tinkering with the accepted technology of the game. Except for the last bit of speculation this seems to appreciate the game. Ec

Steve Bennett wrote: It wasn't there when I first came on board in February 2002 Oh! Rules make most people feel comfortable. It makes them feel they have a chance to win. "Winning" can have a variable definition, and to many it can be as simple as having articles accepted by the community without any major changes. Are they really making major changes to the rules? Of course you can also have a rule that says that a rule made when nobody is looking is also a valid rule. Ec

geni wrote: The response should be to the whole context: Certainly there are a lot of changes happening there, but are they really "major"? For the most part the details there are a matter of housekeeping, though like the death of a thousand cuts stringing enough of them together could accumulate into something major. Getting rid of CSD altogether, that would be major! Ec