Good point - risk management isn't just about technical disaster -
geopolitical issues are actually a much greater long term risk
On 8/15/2011 2:04 AM, foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
The primary value of a fork(s) is not financial or
technical, but
epistemological. We are the big kid in the playground, and that has a
significant effect on the nature of the content. When we work so hard to
build an aura of reliability readers begin to depend on us.
Paradoxically, that's not always good. If we are so reliable, the reader
is not motivated to look elsewhere for alternatives. Natural human
laziness is bad enough by itself. We too easily fall into the trap of
treating Group POV as Neutral POV. Forks, would develop their own
versions of NPOV, and end up with very different results that are as
easily reliable as ours, but still different. It becomes up to the
reader to compare corresponding pages, and draw his own conclusions on
the matter at hand.
We should not be viewing forks as inherent evils to be resisted at all
costs. We should be encouraging them, and helping them.