[Foundation-l] Paths (was Analysis of statistics)

[Marc Riddell]

> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, Milos Rancic<millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 6:42 PM, Marc Riddell<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>> And it is this control group, this "consolidation of power" which was
>>> described earlier in this discussion, that is keeping the Project from
>>> reaching its full potential. This issue has been brought up many times in
>>> the past, but each time has been conveniently ignored by this group - which
>>> in psych language constitutes denial. In fact, this practice of ignoring
>>> persons and/or issues they don't want to confront appears to be a handy
>>> refuge for members of this group. There appears to be a fear in some of the
>>> more forceful in this group that, if they loosen their grip, they will be
>>> left behind. Perhaps they will if they don't grow with it. In any case, this
>>> is one of the most pressing issues facing the Project today. And one, if not
>>> confronted, which will cause the Project to fall into mediocrity as newer,
>>> more tolerant, more innovative projects come into being.
>> 
>> Fully agreed, especially with the last couple of sentences.
>> 
>> ... And except the last one. There will be no similar project to
>> Wikimedia, at least during this century. Projects like Wikipedia are
>> extremely expensive. Which [rational] projects have or had one million
>> of direct contributors? Great Wall, Chinese electrical system, Indian
>> railway system? Maybe. Wikipedia had momentum (and because of that
>> Jimmy's role is priceless) and it is very hard that we'll see another
>> project of such dimensions soon.
>> 
>> As we are inside of the project, we are not able to realize the
>> dimensions of what we are building. The biggest number of articles,
>> number of words, contributors... -- are just trees in the wood which
>> we have created. Numbers are just statistical facts which are not
>> important as is. But, all of them make a wood which existed never
>> before (and, probably, which won't exist for a long time again).
>> 
>> The point is that we, now and here, are making much bigger decisions
>> than how to keep ~10TB of data and build another 100TB of [very
>> useful] data in the next couple of years. Our work affects the whole
>> human civilization. Would we be able to keep or not our projects as
>> healthy places, this would give the answer which path would be used by
>> our civilization.
>> 
>> We have two non-exclusive possibilities: (1) centralized
>> 
on 7/27/09 1:36 PM, Milos Rancic at millosh at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> Hm. Mail hasn't been finished. I wanted to save it and consider
> finishing it later (probably, I wouldn't send it). So, probably, you
> should forget for this email :)
> 
No problem, Milos :-). I've done the same thing myself in the past.

Marc