Warning: This message contains shouting. Please cover your virtual ears if necessary.

On Jul 8, 2006, at 4:51 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

Mboverload is right...

I think you read far more into the utterance you quoted than is there.

Heck even forget vandalizing, just consider folks coming by to add their favorite idea or interpretation. Wikipedia tries to be on the average pretty good, but our model doesn't try to be good at every instant, in fact it fundamentally precludes being good at every instant.

Very well said. We really do need to keep making this as clear as possible - *WIKIPEDIA IS A PROJECT TO WRITE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA - WIKIPEDIA.ORG *IS* *NOT* *AN* *ENCYCLOPEDIA* - IT IS A *D*R*A*F*T* OF AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. (Pardon the shouting.)

The only reason we are leery of clarifying this point is that we still (justifiably) hope to capture (and turn into Wikipedian editors), innocent users who visit Wikipedia.org merely to *read*. I wish I knew a better way to do this, but I don't.

Jesse

Jesse Weinstein