On 1/25/07, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
I don't think it can be broken up, and no, when you broke it up you missed the word "effort", which contextualises the whole statement.
The word "effort" indicates that it's a goal to reach, instead of a descriptive statement of what we already are, no?
And those readings are your readings, not mine.
What are yours?
I read your opinion on how it conflicts with itself. Since I don't see on what basis the statement can be pulled apart, I'm not sure how it can be described as self-contradictory. Did you happen to read the rest of my post?
Of course, but I don't see the relevance. I don't see how JFK's statement can be broken up in a way that conflicts with itself.
Of course I have a better reason for bringing this up than machine translations. A number of users are trying to change Wikipedia's policy to prohibit *all* fair use and permission-only images, and deleting scores of them. Their rationale hinges around this concept that we have a "primary goal" of creating free content, and a "secondary goal" of writing a high-quality encyclopedia. If the goals can in fact be split into multiple sub-goals (which itself is contentious), their subdivision seems completely wrong and backwards to me, and they're destroying a ton of irreplaceable encyclopedic content with it.
In the years I've been contributing to the project, I have always understood that our goal is to create a neutral, reliable encyclopedia "of the highest possible quality" that can be distributed as widely and freely as possible. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia". Copyleft, free content is a tremendously important means to that end, but it isn't the end itself. We should use free content wherever possible, but when no free content exists to suit our encyclopedic purpose, we should still use whatever else we legally can and maximize the benefit downstream users get from the project. Our goal is to create a repository of "the sum of all human knowledge"; not "a collection of copyright-free human knowledge". (That's what Project Gutenberg is for.)
Should we remove articles that haven't been translated into other languages yet because it doesn't meet our subgoal of "in their own language"?
Should we delete images of money, Nazi insignia, and coats of arms because, while free content, they don't meet our subgoal of redistributability and usefulness for every purpose?
Should we delete and paraphrase all quotations and excerpts because they don't meet our subgoal of being free content? Quotation is a form of fair use copyright violation, too, yet I don't see any fanatics with "Say 'NO' to quotation!" banners on their user pages.
Our goal is to write a useful, authoritative encyclopedia and make it as distributable and accessible as possible. We should be doing everything we can to meet this goal.