"Somewhere between the two" is the very
definition of mediocrity.
Yeah, I guess it is. What's wrong with being mediocre? Obviously we
aim to be the best we can, but we have to be realistic and admit we're
not perfect.
I'm not
talking about ideologies, I'm talking about whether or not the
proposed project will actually work. It's a brilliant idea from an
ideological standpoint and I agree with the values it represents, but
if it isn't actually going to work...
And you're absolutely certain of that?
Of course not, one cannot be absolutely certain of anything. If I had
to put a number on it, I'd say I'm 99% that this proposed project will
never rival Wikipedia.
For an
encyclopaedia to be successful, you need people to actually read it.
And how do you get them to do that?
By being useful. Marketing also helps, but if you're useful you'll get
word of mouth, which is how people find out about Wikipedia. The way I
see it, what's useful about Wikipedia is that it has enormous amounts
of information for free (as in beer - I doubt many people care that
it's free as in speech) and that information is of a decent quality.
While it's not reliable enough for serious academic work, it's
reliable enough for most people, and while the writing style could do
with being more aesthetically pleasing it's generally not unpleasant
to read.