[Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture, will "fork" off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia

Sabine Cretella sabine_cretella at yahoo.it
Sat Sep 16 20:32:27 UTC 2006


geni schrieb:
> On 9/16/06, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
>   
>> I know, there is a small group of scientists working on Wikipedia, but
>> this is not seen by the public. And that is what has to change
>>
>>     
>
> The average member of wikipedia seems to try and avoid being
> identified. Anyway rather a lot of our science articles are written by
> people who know the area (you can tell because they tend to be written
> in jargon rather than English).
>   
We should then give the aveage member of Wikipedia a reason why it would 
make sense to be identified ... future will tell :-)
>
>   
>> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. I am talking about
>> marketing for the future and not the past.
>>     
>
> Yes but your marketing strategy would involve looking back.
>
>   
See it like this: Wikipedia is only what it is today because of its past 
- if there hadn't been that handful of people that at the beginning 
started to edit just "for fun" and that went ahead even if the project 
was not so popular, today it would not be there.

Wikipedia is built of several milestones - and the very beginning must 
be there - without a past you don't have a present, without a present 
you don't have a future. Everything is connected.

Wikipedia can only be the first freely editable Encyclopaedia if you 
consider the past.

So building an image that bases on "the only true one, the only 
original" of course is a connection to the past and describes all that 
has been achieved by now and tells people where it wants to go in the 
future. Many trademarks are built like this - why is Xerox Xerox? Whis 
is Mercedes Mercedes? Why is Wikipedia Wikipedia? Because of certain 
values, because of their past and will to be there also in future.

You can optimize the values, but you cannot take them away. You can 
introduce new developments and you will see that they are always based 
on the "original". Certain values may not be touched and these values 
were created at the beginning - the so called core values. Being 
editable by anyone and openness are two of them as much as I recall.

Ciao, Sabine

Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale! 
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