Chad Perrin wrote:
On the other hand, I think it's worth noting that
if promoting literacy
and delivering encyclopedia content to the illiterate (worthy goals to
be sure, but primary goals for other projects, or for the future after
Jimbo's stated primary goal is already met) actually hinders the goal
Jimbo has elucidated here, it's something that should probably be on the
back burner. The Wikipedia project can't be everything to everyone: we
should ensure that it's successful at being something for someone,
though, and that requires a certain narrowing of focus.
This I agree with---we shouldn't try to become some vertically
integrated organization that solves all the world's problems, but
instead a focused grass-roots organization that does a good job at a
narrow set of problems.
There are a number of problems in the world somewhat related to our
mission---illiterate people can't read a written encyclopedia in any
language; people in countries with no internet access can't edit
wikipedia; people in poverty don't have time to work on a wiki
encyclopedia; people living under oppressive governments can't edit
wikipedia freely; etc.
I certainly don't think we should try to solve all those. We can try to
mitigate problems where it's not that hard to do so (e.g. by producing
paper versions to distribute to non-internet-connected areas), but some
of them---like solving the "digital divide" or world hunger, or
overthrowing oppressive governments---are somewhat out of our areas of
core competence.
-Mark