[Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations

[Alec Conroy]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Samuel Klein <sj at wikimedia.org> wrote:

Amazing list of potential allies, partners and new projects.   You
guys all seem very on top of things, all in the mentioned list looked
great and sounded like exciting good fits for us-- from a Wikimedian
perspective at least.

> There have been various proposals for an 'argument wiki' over
> the years,  but I've never seen a working implementation.

See, that's the thing about new projects.   Right now, we treat them
like a shuttle launch-- everything has to be absolutely perfect for us
to grant launch clearance.  This, of course, was how we had to do
things in the old days, when wikis were expensive and we were poor.

But now, I feel like we may be able to move back into an era of rapid
experimentation, where new projects are more like unmanned 1940s test
rockets-- they should be blowing up left and right, as we try to learn
from the failed attempts.

I'll go further-- provided we can do so cheaply, I want new projects
that are like the ridiculous early failures of flight.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7OJvv4LG9M].  I want to hear about a
new WMF project and it's policy, think "That's crazy-- that's never
gonna get off the ground", and indeed, learn something from whether it
crashes or whether it actually takes off.

Having an "early flight era" attitude is how we can find something
even better than Wikipedia.   I agree a lot of ideas are unlikely to
work-- but provided the resource usage is sufficiently negligible, let
people start making insane flying machine projects, and eventually the
wright brothers will show up.

Success is not the only reason to start a project.  Constructive
failure is a valid goal too.

Alec