On 7/15/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
If something makes it easier to generate content, but happens to make it harder to reuse content off site, I'm still all for it.
Then there is no point in furthering this conversation with you. You obviously value the process of content generation over the actual use of that content. This is directly counter to the goals of the project.
-- mav
That's a pretty nasty accusation you've thrown there, Daniel. (That my opinion is counter to the very goals of the project.)
I value the process of content generation over THIRD PARTY use of that content, not over first party use. As I already mentioned in the part you cut off, I also value third party use of the content, but NOT EVER AT THE EXPENSE OF first party generation and use of the content.
This is very different than the oversimplified (and wrong) way you've just portrayed me.
I don't know if you respect my priorities, but I think I understand and respect, but strongly disagree with yours.
Our primary mission is to create an encyclopedia, not to provide content for unrelated third parties. The main site and the projects of it are -always- the first priority. Note that I did NOT say -only- priority.
Angela mentioned CD and DVD distribution, and I agree completely with the overall goal of distributing knowledge in many forms. If we need to adjust our templates and tags to make them easier to strip out for those purposes, then let's go ahead and do that.* But ONLY if it doesn't devalue them in any way on the main Wikipedia project. And restricting them to talk pages only to make it so that the "hard copy" distributors don't have to take a very simple step to strip the templates and tags off seriously damages the main project, in my opinion, so should not be considered.
*Since the templates and tags are -already- relatively simple to strip off using a programmed script, I don't see the need to act on this, but I'm open to suggestions, too.