--- Andrew Lih <alih(a)hku.hk> wrote:
Time limits don't serve Wikis well. Wikis are
good
for continually
evolving content. An arbitrarily set deadline would
drastically change
the nature of edit wars, neutrality disputes,
community and evolution.
I would equate it to an eBay auction where bidders
having an infinite
amount of money, because we all have an inifinite
amount of opinions. :)
-Fuzheado
Well, an encyclopedia typically has the goal of a
static end product too, don't they? And they need to
meet some sort of deadline.
There is no need for an encyclopedia to be static; we are not paper.
One of our advantages is our ablity to change our text as events
happen. A printed or CD version will be static because it can't do
that. Still it may be the only way to disseminate that knowledge to
some parts of the world's population.
eBay has deadlines because sooner or later a decision has to be made
about the sale of a product. If everyone had an infinite amount of
money it wouldn't work on eBay. Infinite bid would be meaningless since
they do nothing to determine the price. If two bidders made an infinite
bid, one could easily award the lot to the first one to make that bid,
but at what price? With arbitrarily high (but finite) bids, you would
have a rapidly inflated market since everybody could bid.
Ec