I don't know, Marc. Wikipedia is not a closed "community": it is such an
open one, with people entering and leaving all the time, that it is questionable whether
the editing "community" is really worthy of the name.
Obviously, some editors are worth trying to retain, but losing people is scarcely a
problem for us. We can simply draft in a new population or two.
C More schi
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:56:08 -0400
From: michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net
To: wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 10/7/07 11:04 AM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com wrote:
>> Then the community isn't rational - that doesn't really surprise me.
>
> Wikipedia is an emotional community - not a rational one.
> Whether this is acceptable is up to the Community itself.
on 10/7/07 11:40 AM, Steve Summit at scs(a)eskimo.com wrote:
Remember, too, that Wikipedia is supposed to be a community
second (or, idealistically, not at all) and an encyclopedia-
writing project first.
The nice thing about all this emotional hand-wringing policy
stuff is that a lot of the time, you can just ignore it (well,
as long as you're not reading this mailing list, anyway :-) )
and get on with the task of writing the encyclopedia.
You miss a huge point here, Steve. An "encyclopedia-writing project" is
a
collaboration of a community of people. And the quality of that
collaboration is, to a great degree, dependent upon the emotional state and
interaction of that community.
Like it or not, Wikipedia is not a refuge from having to deal with people.
Marc
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