On 8/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Can anyone extract useful ideas from this blog entry:
http://thomas-lord.blogspot.com/2006/08/wikipedia-empire-based-on-open-sourc...
I got confused by a few comments like "The Wikipedia community, such as it is" - what, there is no real Wikipedia community?
Also, "It is certainly true that, at the highest levels, Wikipedia is thoroughly centralized." - another bizarre remark. "Power at the highest level is concentrated amongst a few people" - yes...isn't that the definition of "highest level"?
This "An article squatter is someone who is ingratiated to the central Wikipedia authority and who monitors, in more or less real-time, all changes made to the article. " is simply nonsense. I don't think such article squatters have any standing amongst the "central authority" at all, and I doubt the "central authority" as such is even aware of their existence.
If I understand his proposal at all, he would want us to have several possible different versions of each article "competing" against each other. But I don't really get it, to be honest.
Oh, and his concluding line is also odd: "Instead, Jimmy carved himself a kingdom. And with One Laptop Per Child, His Kingdom is about to become an empire. This can't be good." - why? Because all power is bad?
Steve