[Foundation-l] We need to make it easy to fork and leave

[Robin McCain]

Good point - risk management isn't just about technical disaster - 
geopolitical issues are actually a much greater long term risk

On 8/15/2011 2:04 AM, foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> The primary value of a fork(s) is not financial or technical, but
> epistemological.  We are the big kid in the playground, and that has a
> significant effect on the nature of the content. When we work so hard to
> build an aura of reliability readers begin to depend on us.
> Paradoxically, that's not always good. If we are so reliable, the reader
> is not motivated to look elsewhere for alternatives. Natural human
> laziness is bad enough by itself. We too easily fall into the trap of
> treating Group POV as Neutral POV.  Forks, would develop their own
> versions of NPOV, and end up with very different results that are as
> easily reliable as ours, but still different. It becomes up to the
> reader to compare corresponding pages, and draw his own conclusions on
> the matter at hand.
>
> We should not be viewing forks as inherent evils to be resisted at all
> costs. We should be encouraging them, and helping them.