[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

[Ray Saintonge]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 7/18/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>I think it is more to do with Wikipedia's ability to adapt and change
>>with developing technology. If Encyclopedia Britannica had created a
>>wiki back in 2000, Wikipedia may not exist and Britannica would have
>>extended their lifetime by a few decades.
>>    
>>
>"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.
>
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. 

>[snip]
>  
>
>>As long as we are willing to embrace changes and developments (such
>>as, at the moment, Wiktionary Z and Semantic MediaWiki) and don't
>>object for reasons of familiarity, we should do fine.
>>    
>>
>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.
>
No, I would venture to say that most mutations are inconsequential.

>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.
>
Quite the contrary.  If you can't come up with the resources you are not 
the fittest.

>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.
>
Which only proves my point that most biological mutations are 
inconsequential.  Your examples reflect only mere tinkering with the 
accepted technology of the game.

>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.
>
Except for the last bit of speculation this seems to appreciate the game.

Ec