[WikiEN-l] And other observations...

[stevertigo]

A success Wikipedia has thus far been, though issues there are still.
Observations, on these issues I will make.

1) Wikipedia is a collaborative website that tries to be an encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's got a funny name: It was named by the founders after the
"technology" it was based on, rather than the philosophy it was based
on - openness, egalitarianism, honest and honorable conduct, etc.

2) Thus the name "wiki" itself is misapplied to en.w.pedia
"Wiki" is a technological concept. "Wikipedia" is an egalitarian one.
Though people have for years tried to turn "wiki" into a larger, more
philosophical term, it just doesn't want to go there - wiki ultimately
doesn't mean anything more than "quick." We want "Wikipedia" to be
more than just a quickie resource.

3) Wiki facilitates easy editing, but then not everything we do is editing.
In fact the main thing Wikipedia does is just exist - existing in a
digital form at a free/open-access online database for ease of
reading/viewing. Wiki makes lots of things easy - some of which are
conducive to making an encyclopedia. The wiki made vandalism easy too,
but we learned that collaboration itself could deal with that.

( 3b) (It's the infrastructure/databases/operatingsystems/browsers
themselves that facilitate this ease - not just "wiki." Still, we
don't call ourselves the "inter...pedia" or the "web..pedia" for a
reason: Those domain names were already taken. ;-) )

-Stevertigo