[Foundation-l] Our values

[Erik Moeller]

On 9/1/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> This strikes me as somewhat reversed from our typical practice---we have
> goals, like creating a neutral, wide-coverage, multi-lingual
> encyclopedia, or a repository of free media, etc., and then we choose
> means to those goals based on what we find works and doesn't work. We
> use wikis, for example, because they work better than Nupedia did, not
> because we love wikis; and we use consensus-based decision making
> because it seems to work better than the alternatives, not because we
> have some attachment to consensus-based political systems ([[en:WP:NOT]]
> has said as much for many years).

To some extent I agree with you. However:

- Quality (which encompasses many dimensions) may at first seem
blatantly obvious, but it's quite clear that many similar knowledge
collecting websites do _not_ emphasize quality, sometimes deliberately
so to focus on collecting large amounts of factoids or uploads (think
UrbanDictionary. YouTube). I'm not sure how much one can believe in
quality as a "value", though.

- I do not believe that we should ever sacrifice friendliness "for the
greater good". At the most, we should downgrade it to politeness, but
we should never be impolite or unfriendly, and in fact build a
community which strongly emphasizes this throughout its projects.
(Mind you, I do not claim that I or anyone else can always live up to
that goal, but I consider it a failing when we do not do so.) Anyone
who has been on the Internet for a while knows that this idea is far
from self-evident.

- "Participation" and "openness" are perhaps a bit shallow, but it
seems clear that we are trying to empower the greatest number of
people possible to make a positive contribution to free knowledge &
free culture. We're not trying to empower idiots and trolls, of
course. How could this goal of empowering _good_ contributors be
phrased as a value?

I like the slogan "knowledge without boundaries" because it
encompasses, in my view, this element of openness, while also
describing a few other beliefs (the value of knowledge, the idea that
everyone should have access to free education, and so forth).

- I liked the explanation of the word "pioneering" that the group gave
which came up with it. We're not always the first to come up with a
great feature, but we sure as hell are quick to integrate it if it's
libre & useful.

- I do not much like "diversity" as a value and said as much during
our discussions; it sounds too much like corporate-speak to me without
really signifying much.
-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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