The site is still very much a work in progress. Having it launch in beta as a work in progress IMO will attract editors. I of course have no evidence to back this up :-) But I think we will definitely have an advantage with respect to growth by launching early.
It is a nasty legal environment right now. I do not blame the legal team for being cautious. We have an active group wanting us to fail and wanting to delay the launch as much as possible. If we are clear to our readers that we are not launching as an end product but as a community of editors interested in travel writing trying to get back on their feed my bet is that they will understand.
It still amazes me how many people do not realize that anyone can simply jump in and begin improving WMF wikis. If we add a little note to each of these red links (please help us fix this link, click to figure out how) that goes to a page that explains why thy are red, the issues that have occurred, and how to get involved we can launch with editor recruitment built in.
James
On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 7:12 PM, Juergen Fenn
<schneeschmelze@googlemail.com> wrote:
2012/11/4 James Heilman <jmh649@gmail.com>:
> @ Juergen Why can we not start in "beta"? Once things are live it will be
> much easier to bring on more people to address the image issue.
Just in converse. This is 2012, not Wikipedia in 2001. Quality
attracts editors, while red links will deter them. Removing images
from the articles would really be a shame.
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine