On 8/4/06, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 8/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 8/3/06, Fastfission
<fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The value is project-wide, not necessarily on an
article-by-article
basis. And I think Jimbo would say that a high quality encyclopedia is
never at odds with producing a free one. Wikipedia could still be high
Eh? Britannica has done pretty well at producing a high quality
encyclopaedia, but they haven't gotten off the ground in the free
stakes.
I'll Eh? right back at you. Just because EB can produce quality and
NOT be free does not at all mean that quality and being free are
incompatible.
Ok, we're probably understanding the phrase "at odds with"
differently. In any case, I think we agree - an encyclopaedia can be
high quality without being free, free without being high quality, or
can be both. And there are decisions that can be taken which are
effectively trade offs - the quality of EB would probably suffer
greatly if it suddenly converted to a wiki with all paid staff sacked.
On the other hand, Wikipedia is much higher quality than a number of
other "closed source" encyclopaedias.
In any case, going back and forth over the question of
whether
Wikipedia would be high quality without fair use images seems fairly
silly to me since the designation is entirely subjective. I think your
position is a little silly but you're allowed to say the same about
mine. I think you're putting short-term aesthetics ahead of legal and
long-term sensibilities.
Yep. I don't believe a great deal in the future - or maybe I'm
impatient and short-sighted. My attitude towards editing Wikipedia
(and wikis in general) is "what can I do to make this page better for
the next user than it was five minutes ago, and how can I encourage
that next user to make it even better for the user after him".
Sometimes a short term dip in "quality" has to be taken for the long
term - removing useful but unverifiable and POV information, for
instance. I don't know that I'm really advocating taking legal risks
for short term gains though.
Yes, it's
a pity that we have to do all our diagrams from scratch,
there are thousands of articles that need some.
So put in a diagram request. There are people who are happy to make
diagrams for articles. Filling diagram requests is MUCH easier than
photography because you can do it from anywhere and with free
software.
You're right, I will.
Steve