On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/5 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
I would put a pretty large bet on the fact that someone is going to think they need to keep Wikipedia long past the point where it's worth it to keep it. Wrong decisions will be made to delete or oversight content, but whatever isn't oversighted or deleted will be kept by someone long after its usefulness has dropped below the cost of maintaining it. There are lots of packrats working on Wikipedia.
You are only considering the direct useful of the information contained, not the historical value it could have in years to come. We don't research Roman building methods (to pick a completely random example) because we want to use their methods to improve our own buildings, we research them to learn more about the Roman people. You can argue that history is useless, but I would disagree, as would many other people (historians in particular!).
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In 3000 years, nobody will give a rat's ass about Britney Spears' discography (again, to pick a random example of "pop culture"). That's a bet I'm willing to make.
-Chad