No subject

contributing to them without trying to encapsulate them is an
effective way to propagate ideas and memes.

> It's entirely possible for there to be a Gresham's Law with regard to
> collaborative encyclopedias, in my view.

I understand that your original comment was about preservation.    I
don't think that Gresham's Law applies in the realm of non-rival
knowledge and services.  It might in the realm of 'public attention'
-- though today it is common for people to take in duplicate free
information.

> a project only 60 percent as good at fulfilling our mission could still r=
eplace us
> or make us irrelevant -- losing the values and culture and even much of t=
he
> content we have helped create.  Any study of the history of economics see=
s
< patterns like this all the time... active spread of the
collaborative culture we
> believe in requires something like eternal vigilance.

How could we lose the content we have helped create?  I agree that we
could do more to present the principles that support Wikipedia to our
readers.  The idea of public sharing and a collective commons are just
as popular as WP itself, but need reinforcement.

> while there are many ways to make these elements more universal in our
> society, but moral suasion on mailing lists is perhaps not the dominant t=
actic.

Neither do emails keep million-person collaborations from becoming
irrelevant, yet they are part of the process.

We can invest effort as a community in 'eternal vigilance', uniting
against a common foe, and fending off memetic predators -- or we can
invest effort in spreading ideas and sharing best practices in the
spirit of empowering others to learn from our discoveries.  There is
an opportunity cost either way.

Sj