On Mar 31, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
In en.wikipedia, we have a base of work for the future. And therefore it is natural and proper that we should over time get more and more and more serious about quality.
Then what the hell was the point in writing all the stuff in the first place?
I mean, I've made a good number of contributions based on personal knowledge and on primary sources of philosophical and theoretical texts in the humanities. Stuff that doesn't fit the current "independent secondary sources or bust" model at all. I'm appalled at the idea that these contributions - contributions I made admin on the basis of, and contributions that my ability to make was part of why I fell in love with the project - are now part of a steaming pile of shit that needs to be cleared out.
If we want to get serious about quality, there are ways to do it without starting to destroy what we've already built. But this idea that we should feel guilty because you got slammed in a television interview is ridiculous. Of course Wikipedia has inaccuracies. It always has. You know full well we haven't fixed them all. And we've had a defense in line for that for years too - "it's a work in progress. We don't recommend using Wikipedia as the only source for serious research. We recommend using it as a starting point, with care, and looking at the sources and other resources provided." I know being slammed in a TV interview isn't fun. But, well, if you want to be able to go on TV praising a project that's done and accurate and wonderful, Wikipedia probably isn't the project to go on TV about. It doesn't lend itself to that. It lends itself to having to be defended, over and over again, against the same objections. It lends itself to waiting for two or three years at which point we'll be better. It lends itself to recognizing that we hit the big time well before we were ready to. You of all people should know that. So stop trying to guilt the community because the job of evangelizing Wikipedia isn't as easy as you'd like.
-Phil