Marc Riddell wrote:
on 10/7/07 3:21 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote
One could get into a lot of semantic issues here.
There is a community
whose primary objective is to build an encyclopedia.
Yes, Ray, but this community is made up of people with emotions. The most
common cause of gridlock in the project is not the conflict of ideas - but
of emotions.
More precisely emotions dressed up as ideas.
And, you can keep filling a building with stuff. But,
unless you have a
reliable, stable, consistent infrastructure to support it - and are
constantly working to support and maintain that infrastructure - that
building will eventually collapse.
That sounds too much like my wife's complaint about my clutterholic book
collecting habits.
Much of the present thinking is not keeping pace with
the reality.
That has multiple aspects. Among these is the inability of many people
to think in big-picture terms.
The thought suggested by someone else on this thread
that, in essence, it
doesn't matter if, or why, a person leaves the project there are always
those to replace them - is bullshit. Once again we are reduced to expendable
bodies building a monument to someone.
The theory of expendable bodies sometimes
works well when you're trying
to support an army with cannon fodder. :-(
Ec