On 8/7/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, funny. This opening description is interesting: "...encyclopaedia operating under an open-source management style...uses a collaborative software known as wiki that facilitates the creation and development of articles." What an interesting idea to describe our "management style" as "open-source" and to relegate the role of the wiki as just "facilitating" article creation and development. Is this the prejudice of a "traditional" encyclopaedia which has rigid management structures, and sees that as the most striking difference?
What would you say is the most striking difference? I'd say it's a close tie between free as in open source and open as in...wiki. In most news reports I've heard the first part is less emphasized though.
As for relegating the role of the wiki to just "facilitating" article creation and development, what would you say it does? The wiki certainly doesn't write the articles, people do!
Anyway, I'd say the much worse snippet is the one linked to by "open source":
"computer software whose source code is put into the public domain, subject to the restriction that any improvements or derived software also include the source code and be put into the public domain."
I suppose the term "public domain" has other meanings apart from the technical "copyright free" one, but that's still damn confusing for someone who doesn't know that open source software is still copyrighted.
Looking at the rest of the snippet though, I see "Open source refers to both a model of software development and an ideology of intellectual property." There again are those two things which I think are the most striking difference(s) in Wikipedia.
Anthony