Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else, and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you. There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted, covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
This is what the inherent failure of wikipedia is. It's that there's a small set of content generators, a massive amount of wonks and twiddlers, and then a heaping amount of procedural whackjobs. And the mass of triddlers and procedural whackjobs means that the content generators stop being so and have to become content defenders. Woe be that your take on things is off from the majority. Even if you can prove something, you're now in the situation that anybody can change it. And while that's all great in a happy-go-lucky flower shower sort of way, it's when you realize that the people who are going to change it could have absolutely no experience with the subject whatsoever, then you see where we are.
(I plagiarized the above from Jason Scott, but I agree with every word.)
Uncle Ed
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:14 -0500, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else, and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you. There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted, covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
Except...it's not your car!
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:32:38 -0600, Richard Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Except...it's not your car!
Well, not quite. It's *was* his car, but it stopped being so the moment he brought it into the shop.
From that point on it became either the property of the shop, or the
collective property of all the people in the shop (depending on how you see things).
Steve
Stephen Forrest wrote:
Richard Holton wrote:
Except...it's not your car!
Well, not quite. It's *was* his car, but it stopped being so the moment he brought it into the shop.
From that point on it became either the property of the shop, or the collective property of all the people in the shop (depending on how you see things).
Being a commie punk calling myself an anarchist, I prefer the idea that it becomes no one's property (GFDL licence aside), as I once argued for here: http://anti-state.com/forum/index.php?board=6;action=display; threadid=5852
That's partly what setting free means right... effectively not being owned by anybody.
Christiaan
Stephen Forrest wrote:
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:32:38 -0600, Richard Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Except...it's not your car!
Well, not quite. It's *was* his car, but it stopped being so the moment he brought it into the shop.
If you love something, set it free.
Richard Holton wrote:
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:14 -0500, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else, and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you. There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted, covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
Except...it's not your car!
That would be the key point, yes. That's what "no article ownership" means.
- d.
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:59:27 +0000, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Richard Holton wrote:
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:14 -0500, Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else, and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you. There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted, covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
Except...it's not your car!
That would be the key point, yes. That's what "no article ownership" means.
- d.
Well, if it's your original contribution, you are quite free to go put it up somewhere else as well, with (c) MyName 2005. All the more so if you put a modified version of your own work somewhere else (you and only you can do this and not release it under GFDL, anyone else using your work from Wikipedia must release the modified version as GFDL).
Of course, the version you've uploaded to Wikipedia is available there under the GFDL, so there's little point to the above. But you retain copyright to your own work (you've simply offered "right to copy" and "right to modify" to everyone else also under the GFDL). Incidentally, the (c) MyName 2005 isn't even necessary. Copyright is automatic. Notices simply serve to remind people who has copyright.
So it's more complicated. It's like it's your custom-designed car, but you specifically have allowed anyone to use it, make an exact or modified replica (providing they also allow the same for their version), paint it pink, drive it whereever, etc. But you reserve the right to roll out a new or duplicate version of your car, anywhere else in the world, and not make those allowances.
I've probably lost a few people. Analogies can only be taken so far!
Zoney
And at the same time this is the overwhelming beauty of the whole system. Not only do we set knowledge free so as to stop others from owning it but we also set it free so that you can pick up a set of all the tools and drive your car down to where you've bought your own garage and proceed to set up a shop with managers, and lead mechanics.
Christiaan
On 2 Mar 2005, at 10:04 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else, and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you. There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted, covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.
This is what the inherent failure of wikipedia is. It's that there's a small set of content generators, a massive amount of wonks and twiddlers, and then a heaping amount of procedural whackjobs. And the mass of triddlers and procedural whackjobs means that the content generators stop being so and have to become content defenders. Woe be that your take on things is off from the majority. Even if you can prove something, you're now in the situation that anybody can change it. And while that's all great in a happy-go-lucky flower shower sort of way, it's when you realize that the people who are going to change it could have absolutely no experience with the subject whatsoever, then you see where we are.
(I plagiarized the above from Jason Scott, but I agree with every word.)
Uncle Ed
Christiaan Briggs wrote:
And at the same time this is the overwhelming beauty of the whole system. Not only do we set knowledge free so as to stop others from owning it but we also set it free so that you can pick up a set of all the tools and drive your car down to where you've bought your own garage and proceed to set up a shop with managers, and lead mechanics.
Unfortunately too many people who try to apply this system mispronounce the word "lead".
Ec