On 26/06/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sorry, I meant to reply to it. I like it as a slogan, and it's very descriptive of an important thing about us. The amount of community buy-in that would be needed to effect the change strikes me at first impression as infeasible, but calling it "a living encyclopedia" is a useful way to describe this important difference between wiki-based encyclopedias and how the previous generation (Britannica, Brockhaus et al) did it with the "get a bunch of smart guys to write it" model. Because I seriously think no-one will ever start a general encyclopedia again on that model, and even specialist encyclopedias written on the "bunch of smart guys" or "one smart guy" haven't a hope against the wiki model - wikis, and the MediaWiki software in particular, are a natural for the task of gathering the knowledge of enthusiasts.
And I should say I'd prefer keeping the current "The Free Encyclopedia", as in free content - because that's an important thing distinguishing us from one failed past Internet collaborative knowledge-gathering exercise, the [[Open Directory Project]] - which is not quite dead but is largely moribund, because when the corporation no longer cared much and the community failed it was impossible to fork and start over. Wikipedia will survive its community or corporate organisation failing, even if not in particularly good health.
- d.