2008/7/14 Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se>se>:
If you start a project on the basis that Wikipedia is
too
complicated, you are likely to fool yourself. Your project will
be different only as long as (1) it is far younger than Wikipedia
and/or (2) it has attracted far fewer people than Wikipedia. For
a successful project, you want neither of these.
You need a way to keep a project simple *despite* attracting lots
of users and accumulating over time. Maybe you have that formula,
only time can tell. The wonder of Wikipedia is that it isn't far
more complicated than it is. Ask some people who work on
industrial development projects involving the same amount of
people and time, and you'll find many examples that have been
faster in accumulating complexity ([[Cruft]], feature creep).
Yes. Wikipedia's problems are largely emergent features of an
experiment, rather than a matter of negligent design of an engineered
product.
See also
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep and
understand why it's so.
- d.