The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness.
That is incorrect. The entire goal of this project is to create the largest, most widely-used, and best encyclopedia in the world and to give that to everybody on the planet. Everything else, and I mean *everything* (including our openness and the community itself), is a means to *that* end. Nothing more.
True, Wikipedia is effectively an experiment in openness and radical democracy. But that has never been the goal or point of it. We have just found that experimenting in those areas have brought us great success (at least in terms of growth). But the experiment continues and we will need to adjust as events change. So we must change the way we do things if and/when any aspect of our experimental methods show a systematic problem that adversely impacts quality.
Is the Seigenthaler incident a symptom of such a systematic problem? One can't use a single example to prove such a thing, but it still should serve as a wake up call. That call is this: We are big and popular now. Like it or not a great many people who never edit articles and never will, trust (or at least use) us as a source. So I think we have an obligation to question our methods when quality has slipped.
Saying SoGoFixIt when reads outnumber writes by more than 200 to 1 is no longer a valid retort. However, I agree that killing the goose called Openness that laid the golden egg called Wikipedia would be a huge mistake. But I think we can and should continue to improve the ways we try to tame and monitor that beast (better RC patrol features, trust networks to filter RC and watchlists, article validation, etc).
Openness has been a profitable gravy train for us. Let's not forget that the train is supposed to be going toward a certain direction.
-- mav
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness.
That is incorrect. The entire goal of this project is to create the largest, most widely-used, and best encyclopedia in the world and to give that to everybody on the planet. Everything else, and I mean *everything* (including our openness and the community itself), is a means to *that* end. Nothing more.
I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end. The fact that this increases its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself. For me at least, and I suspect at least some number of other people, this is the *only* end---to produce a completely Free encyclopedia, which everyone is then free to use as they wish, save that they may not restrict others' right to do the same with their derived works. This then allows any third party to fulfill whatever end they have in mind, including disseminating it to every person on earth, editing it into other works, producing WikiReaders, producing travel guides, using it as source material for literary works, or whatever else.
Were this not true, there would be a rival Gnupedia that many of us would be working on instead---The Gnupedia proposal was withdrawn only because Wikipedia serves this goal already.
-Mark
Hoi, I think that having the best encyclopedia and having a free encyclopedia do not exclude each other at all. If anything they are complimentary to each other. We cannot create the most widely-used encyclopedia when people are not free to use it. We can discuss some exceptions to this necessary freedom, but we all do agree on the need for the Wikipedias to be Free.
Both of you in my opinion put the content first. The community is essential in achieving our goal. It cannot be underestimated what value our community has. We can lose half our content because with our community we can easily rebuild it. We will have a hard time to even hang on to our current content if we lose our community. Our community has a focus and this can be found in our projects.
However and this is the core argument, this community exists to have this large, widely used, in many languages encyclopedia available to all people who have a need for it. As a Wikimedia Foundation we should not let this be enough. There is so much more information that people need. What good is an encyclopedia if it is all we have to give.. The aim of the WMF is much broader than just Wikipedia.. This can be achieved as well if we work together, when we are inclusive and allow all our projects and communities to prosper.
Thanks, GerardM
On 12/1/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
The entire goal of this project is freedom and openness.
That is incorrect. The entire goal of this project is to create the
largest, most widely-used, and
best encyclopedia in the world and to give that to everybody on the
planet. Everything else, and I
mean *everything* (including our openness and the community itself), is a
means to *that* end.
Nothing more.
I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end. The fact that this increases its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself. For me at least, and I suspect at least some number of other people, this is the *only* end---to produce a completely Free encyclopedia, which everyone is then free to use as they wish, save that they may not restrict others' right to do the same with their derived works. This then allows any third party to fulfill whatever end they have in mind, including disseminating it to every person on earth, editing it into other works, producing WikiReaders, producing travel guides, using it as source material for literary works, or whatever else.
Were this not true, there would be a rival Gnupedia that many of us would be working on instead---The Gnupedia proposal was withdrawn only because Wikipedia serves this goal already.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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-- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end. The fact that this increases its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself.
You say that, but then you explain why that is so in terms of increasing use and availability (bringing us back into means-to-an end territory). Also, freedom to use Wikipedia would be pointless if its quality was so bad that nobody would bother.
I'm here to create something that people will find useful. If it ain't useful, then who cares if it is free? Wikipedia's free qualities are very, very important to be sure. But that aspect is only part of the picture.
For me
at least, and I suspect at least some number of other people, this is the *only* end---to produce a completely Free encyclopedia, which everyone is then free to use as they wish, save that they may not restrict others' right to do the same with their derived works. This then allows any third party to fulfill whatever end they have in mind, including disseminating it to every person on earth, editing it into other works, producing WikiReaders, producing travel guides, using it as source material for literary works, or whatever else.
The value of freedom is in its use. The fact that Wikipedia is free makes it much more useful. One reason I contribute is that I know my contributions will be kept free; again, that is a means to an end (getting people like me and you to add content and discourage viable forks by making it possible to easily incorporate any changes to the forked version).
-- mav
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
Daniel Mayer wrote:
The value of freedom is in its use. The fact that Wikipedia is free makes it much more useful. One reason I contribute is that I know my contributions will be kept free; again, that is a means to an end (getting people like me and you to add content and discourage viable forks by making it possible to easily incorporate any changes to the forked version).
Well yes, in a broad sense if there were no possible uses, then it would not have much purposes. But I don't see it as a means to any specific end, certainly anything so specific as distributing an encyclopedia to everyone in the world---a large body of Free high-quality information is the end. By the nature of Free information, other ends can then follow by whoever wants them to follow, without them even having to get permission from us.
I think where I seem to be differing at least from Jimbo, and possibly from you, is that I don't see us as going for any specific one of the possible uses that can be made, but instead as enabling all of them. In fact, I think it would be ideal if the Wikimedia Foundation were *not* the one making all those uses---we will have succeeded if we produce a high-quality free encyclopedia that enables thousands of third parties to distribute, adapt, and use it however they wish, coordinating or not with us as they please.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Well yes, in a broad sense if there were no possible uses, then it would not have much purposes. But I don't see it as a means to any specific end, certainly anything so specific as distributing an encyclopedia to everyone in the world---a large body of Free high-quality information is the end. By the nature of Free information, other ends can then follow by whoever wants them to follow, without them even having to get permission from us. I think where I seem to be differing at least from Jimbo, and possibly from you, is that I don't see us as going for any specific one of the possible uses that can be made, but instead as enabling all of them. In fact, I think it would be ideal if the Wikimedia Foundation were *not* the one making all those uses---we will have succeeded if we produce a high-quality free encyclopedia that enables thousands of third parties to distribute, adapt, and use it however they wish, coordinating or not with us as they please.
Indeed. That's why I say "in ten years, if you want a good encyclopedia it's going to have to be Wikipedia *or a fork*." It doesn't actually matter in the longer run if it's Wikipedia itself providing the packaged distribution; indeed, de:'s DVD has worked very nicely being produced by a company rather than by Wikimedia itself, and thankfully it was a company with the good sense to involve the de: community as much as possible and send a percentage back to Wikimedia (was it to the Foundation or to the .de organisation?).
- d.
de:'s DVD has worked very nicely being produced by a company rather than by Wikimedia itself, and thankfully it was a company with the good sense to involve the de: community as much as possible and send a percentage back to Wikimedia (was it to the Foundation or to the .de organisation?).
As far as I'm aware they gave one euro per DVD to the German Wikimedia chapter.
Angela
Daniel Mayer wrote:
-- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end. The fact that this increases its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself.
You say that, but then you explain why that is so in terms of increasing use and availability (bringing us back into means-to-an end territory). Also, freedom to use Wikipedia would be pointless if its quality was so bad that nobody would bother.
I'm here to create something that people will find useful. If it ain't useful, then who cares if it is free? Wikipedia's free qualities are very, very important to be sure. But that aspect is only part of the picture.
Usefulness is another one of those subjective terms that varies with the user.
Ec
Delirium wrote:
I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end. The fact that this increases its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself.
I don't think these two are in tension. What Mav was talking about is how we care about the free _encyclopedia_ (emphasizing quality) more than we care about our crazy open wiki way of making it.
For me at least, and I suspect at least some number of other people, this is the *only* end---to produce a completely Free encyclopedia, which everyone is then free to use as they wish, save that they may not restrict others' right to do the same with their derived works.
And what Delirium is talking about is how we care about the _free_ encyclopedia (emphasizing gnu-freedom) more than we care about our crazy open wiki way of making it.
I think everyone in the core community is on board with those two concepts in a major way. And all of us love the wiki ways, but not at the expense of those two goals.
(Although, I should add, I think that mainstream media hysteria notwithstanding, there seems to be no compelling reason to do more than slowly and carefully seek cautious tweaks to our current model in the service of constant improvement.)
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
And what Delirium is talking about is how we care about the _free_ encyclopedia (emphasizing gnu-freedom) more than we care about our crazy open wiki way of making it.
I think everyone in the core community is on board with those two concepts in a major way. And all of us love the wiki ways, but not at the expense of those two goals.
Yes, perhaps so. I may have misread, but I read mav as suggesting that the reason we are a gnu-free encyclopedia is as a practical means-to-an-end matter: We want to create an encyclopedia that reaches everyone, and this helps us do it. I disagree with that view---*even* if there were some way to create a non-Free encyclopedia that allowed the Wikimedia Foundation to give it to everyone on the planet (but restricted what others could do with it), I would still want to work on a Free encyclopedia project that allows anyone to use it for essentially any purpose (and it's not all that farfetched a scenario---Wikipedia could probably have still attracted a lot of contributors under some non-Free license, like one that restricted 3rd-party use to non-commercial and academic/educational users; in fact some people have actually been surprised and/or upset that we *do* permit 3rd-party commercial use).
Basically, in a sort of big-picture sense, I see Wikipedia as a project to give to humanity as a whole an unencumbered body of work. Everything else sort of follows naturally from that, because once it exists, people *will* find plenty of interesting things to do with it (just look at all the interesting ways Project Gutenberg texts are used).
-Mark
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