Sheldon Rampton wrote:
Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu> wrote:
Let's be clear that, especially after the
failure of Nupedia to take
off,
Wikipedia's success was a surprise both to Sanger and Wales. Neither
of them
expected that this would happen and can therefore not take full or
too much
credit for it.
The fact that they were surprised by its success does not mean that
they don't deserve credit for it. History is full of ideas whose
success surprised their creators. I'm sure the Beatles were surprised
when they soared to the top of the music charts (especially after they
had spent years grinding away with only modest success in Hamburg and
Liverpool).
I agree with the above, and in fact consider it a partial
refutation of the views I myself floated previously
in this thread, as far as it is an accurate characterization
of what really happened (which I cannot judge).
When Linus Torvalds released the first version of
Linux,
he had no way of knowing that it would take off the way it did. That
doesn't mean the Beatles don't deserve credit for their music or
Torvalds doesn't deserve credit for Linux.
This is a more interesting case though. Minix did not
take off. Somewhere along the way, well after the first
version of Linux, Torvalds displayed a form of agility
that Tannenbaum clearly appears to have lacked. And
that was nothing about the initial idea, but all about
what followed, each decision along the route.
If anything, the failure of Nupedia shows that Sanger
and Wales
deserve *more* credit, not less. Rather than giving up on the idea of
an online encyclopedia after their first attempt, they persevered,
retooled and came up with an alternative approach that did work. Of
course they had no way of knowing what a success it would become. They
got lucky, and a huge community of other people has contributed in
various ways. But they still deserve credit for the original innovation.
This brings to mind another point I have been mulling over...
To what extent were Wales and/or Sanger in fact coming
up with an idea out of nothing? And in fact was the idea
ever an "alternative" approach (until it was abundantly
clear that Nupedia would never pan out), rather than a
"complementary" one?
In fact; and I realize I am getting into really bold and
speculative territory here, which might get me into
some trouble here, if people don't realize I am merely
just speculating... how much, if at all, was the
creation of the "scratchpad" influenced by the wildly
more freewheeling "GNUpedia" project of Richard
M. Stallman?
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen