Klare Worte zum Thema "Online-Gemeinschaft oder Enzyklopädie":
-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Betreff: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is an encyclopedia Datum: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 11:16:21 -0800 Von: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com Antwort an: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org An: wikien-l@wikimedia.org, wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org
Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.
I don't know of any real case where there is a genuine strong tension between these two things, either. That is to say, the central core of the community, the people who are really doing the work, are virtually all quite passionate on this point: that we're creating something of extremely high quality, not just goofing around with a game of online community with no purpose.
The community does not come before our task, the community is organized *around* our task. The difference is simply that decisions ought to always be made not on the grounds of social expediency or popular majority, but in light of the requirements of the job we have set for ourselves.
I do not endorse the view, a view held as far as I know only by a very tiny minority, that Wikipedia is anti-elitist or anti-expert in any way. If anything, we are *extremely* elitist but anti-credentialist. That is, we seek thoughtful intelligent people willing to do the very hard work of getting it right, and we don't accept anything less than that. PhDs are valuable evidence of that, and attracting and retraining academic specialists is a valid goal.
There may be some cases of PhDs who think that no one should edit their expert articles, but there are many many more cases of completely unqualified people who think the same thing. It doesn't matter: if someone can't work in a friendly helpful way in a social context, that's a problem for them and for us, and we'll always have to make some very complex judgments about what to do about it.
I'm 100% committed to a goal of "Britannica or better" quality for Wikipedia, and all of our social rules should revolve around that. Openness is indispensible for us, but it is our *radical* means to our radical *ends*.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l