[Commons-l] Durova tries to get us more pics

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 10/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://searchengineland.com/071009-084922.php
>
> This is not the dazzling polished work of wonder she wanted it to be,
> as her hard disk went BANG on the weekend and she had to rewrite the
> whole thing from scratch yesterday. I added ideas and some quotes.
>
> I think the Richard Schiff vs Michele Merkin appproach might make the
> point clear!

David, I cringe whenever you post one of these Durova messages.

When a person contributes content for the express purpose of getting
us to link to something or mention something we are being abused. It
may often be that the benefits of accepting their mis-motivated
contributions far exceed the harm of being used as a promotional tool
but it still makes me very uncomfortable.

To me it seems that we are possibly incubating a class of use which
our long term survivability demand we be able to reject categorically.
Our openness is our greatest strength, but it's also our biggest
weakness: If the world starts seeing Wiki(p|m)edia as a resource for
promotion rather than a resource for learning and selflessly sharing
knowledge then we will have failed.

Durova clearly good for the size of commons in the sort term, but long
term it might result in quite a tragedy, .. ego gets in our way
enough, more private interest can't help.

I'd much rather hear about people's efforts to bring in other
clasesses of photographers... people who have missions more in common
with ours, rather than marketers whos mission is often so orthogonal.
Other non-profits, governments, educators, etc..

Why don't you forward news of that instead? ... Probably because it
isn't happening. How do we fix that?