On 30 December 2010 00:27, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
You could even compete by
putting up a better editing interface, conceivably, although auth
would be tricky to work out.
You know, this is something that would be extremely easy to experiment
with right now,
On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 6:59 PM, Brion Vibber
<brion(a)pobox.com> wrote:
> I think this isn't as useful a question as it
might be; defining a project
> in terms of competing with something else leads to stagnation, not
> innovation.
I agree. The correct strategy to take down Wikipedia
would involve
overcoming the network effect that locks it into its current position
of dominance, and that's not something that would be useful for
Wikipedia itself to do. To fend off attacks of this sort, what you'd
want is to make your content harder to reuse, which we explicitly
*don't* want to do. Better to ask: how can we enable more people to
contribute who want to but can't be bothered?
Making Wikipedia easy to mirror and fork is the best protection I can
think of for the content itself. It also keeps the support structures
(Foundation) and community good and honest. Comparison: People keep
giving Red Hat money; Debian continues despite a prominent and
successful fork (Ubuntu), and quite a bit goes back from the fork
(both pull and push).
- d.