On 3/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:21:03 -0500, you wrote:
Wikipedia isn't Microsoft. There's a big difference between running a non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation. Even then, Wikipedia isn't really either. Wikipedia, after all, has been around before the foundation was even created. It is in essence a community of people, which can and will exist with or without the foundation. Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless the community gives itself over to the foundation.
How sure are you of this? If the foundation and its assets were closed down tomorrow, how long would it take to rebuild Wikipedia from mirrors and rebuild the community?
Foundations with their assets don't close overnight. Maybe the website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation (board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a few days before an injunction was issued. That said, a replacement site could be put up within hours. The community might become somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which that is actually a good thing. In the long run a peer-to-peer system is probably what's best for Wikipedia.
The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed irrevocably.
I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation, so I can't comment. Was h2g2 released under a free license?
It strikes me that the foundation stands between the community and hostile reactions to what the community says and does. I've seen at least one case where people tried to use Wikipedia to further a grievance, and in that case killing the content was entirely correct: subsequent investigation showed that it bore only the most tenuous relationship to the truth.
I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right now. People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why? It's only been a couple of days. It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing; in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something else :-) Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG