2008/5/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
Everyone may hate Wikipedia, but they still use it, and that's what matters.
Once again, the product is more important than the people.
I really don't understand why you keep saying this as if it's a scandalous revelation.
Surely it's self-evident that a community of volunteers, who have gathered together *to work on a specific goal*, will elevate that aim over and above the process of community formation?
[Yes, we as a culture treat people badly, especially newcomers. Yes, we need to improve our default interactions with the outside world. But this doesn't mean we need to consider the community as more important than the encyclopedia... without the encyclopedia, the community is an ill-matched and purposeless crowd of people, and would implode fairly quickly]