Functionally speaking Wikipedia (as a website running a wiki and all of its little rules and so forth) is a project to create an encyclopedia (a bunch of text and images licensed under the GFDL). It is also a website where you can view said encyclopedia as well.
When people say, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia," what they mean is, "Wikipedia, as a project, is primarily to develop an encyclopedia, and not a group of links, and not a list of all information in the world, and not etc. etc. etc." They are referring to the goals and the prioirities and drawing up lines between what the goal of the project is and is not.
I don't think one can take the division between content and method as being very rigid in this case. The content is unavoidably a direct result of our method (and it shows, for better or worse), and that remains the case even when you port it into another context (whether one takes this to mean in terms of quality, style, appearance, conventions, or even just a statement about the licensing scheme, it still follows).
This is part of the reason I am very wary when people try to draw very strict boundaries. Sociologists call this "boundary-work" (we have an entry on it, for the curious), and recognize that while such line-creating and line-drawing usually is done in the interest of "method", it has obvious and often conscious effect on things like "content" as well. (Usually this sort of analysis is done on the struggles to delineate "science" and "non-science", or "science" and "politics".)
Which is not to say that we can't have rules which enforce certain distinctions, and is not to say that all forms of "community" are equal or positive, but that we should be concerned more with the net effect than the semantics of the rules, and be very conscious that much of what benefits "community" will also benefit "the encyclopedia".
As an analog, there have been a number of studies which have convincingly argued that regulatory frameworks work better when there is no pretense that the line between "science" and "politics" is going to be murky in such situations. In contexts where the distinction is perceived to be not only rigid, but necessary, the entire process usually gets broken down over pointless and endless debates and accusations. (Hence regulatory debates in the EU are relatively smooth affairs in comparison with the US, whose system is set up in a way which encourages controversy rather than compromise).
FF
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson computerjoe.mailinglist@googlemail.com wrote:
However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged
recently:
- It is an encyclopedia with a community
- It is a community with an encyclopedia
- It is an encyclopedia
- It is a community
Interesting. The dichotomy I most often see, that people have trouble deciding on, is :
- Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia
- Wikipedia is a project to create an encyclopaedia
It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or is it a peek into a work in progress?
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l