Charles Matthews wrote:
Disagree/agree. The goal of WP _is_ to become an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia functionality is central. On the other hand the wiki aspect is also central. Those who want WP content but not the wiki side are free to set up a fork- that might be a valid project, but would not be WP.
I agree with this, but for a sort of roundabout reason---the original, and still pretty much the only real goal of Wikipedia is to produce a good free-content encyclopedia. The Wiki aspect is simply the way of doing so that seems, so far, to have worked out the best (a model like Nupedia, for example, seems like it would've required exponentially more money to grow to a Wikipedia level of size and quality). I do think maintaining the "wikiness" is important, not really for its own sake, but because it's the best way to ensure that we have a good encyclopedia (and, increasingly, good textbooks, a good compendium of primary sources, and so on). IMO, if things were to become radically more centralized and hierarchical, Wikipedia would become more and more like an old-fashioned encyclopedia, and we already have some of those. =]
-Mark