On 11/20/2013 01:13 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
My general point is that opportunities for automation
are best
considered with our overall mission in mind, not just the speed or
efficiency of a particular workflow. In certain situations, automation
that creates more work rather than removing it (such as by identifying
potential tasks and feeding them to editors) might be preferable. And
some of our tools already use such an approach, which is a good thing.
That's an interesting approach, but I'm not sure how constructive it is
in the long run. I suppose it depends greatly on whether one considers
our mission to be 'building an encyclopedia to share in the sum[...]' or
'having an encyclopedia to share in the sum[...]' (I'm not sure if I
make the subtle distinction here clear).
Perhaps another way of putting it is to ask whether the
encyclopedia-building community is the means or the ends. To my eyes,
having "more contributors" is not valuable unless it has "better
encyclopedia" as a direct consequence.
-- Marc