Erik Moeller wrote:
On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher
<brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:
OK... except that Erik specifically stated that
these mission and
vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
would or would not support WikiFoo.
Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
used.
I answered here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free…
I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
nearly a month old.
One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
"knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.
<snip>
Agree with all of that. The problem is that when you talk about
"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical
sense",
and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...
--
Alphax -
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"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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