On 1/14/07, K P kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
At some point, though, Wikipedia has to decide what it is, a reliable source of information on the Internet, or a place for its editors. At one of the top 10 sites, it should be leaning towards the former, with, eventually, all information reliable and sourced.
See, if I *had* to make a choice, I'd choose the latter. In fact, I'd shut off the search engines through robots.txt and send everyone to one of the mirrors before I'd lose focus on the goal of *creating* the best encyclopedia. Being a top 10 website is not the goal (in my opinion). At best it is a means to attract new contributors - at worst it is a distraction due to people saying exactly what you just said.
Do I think a choice *has* to be made? No, not really. I think it's quite possible to have a single site that does both; or alternatively, for the foundation to run both sites.
Right now there is a place for some unsourced information, namely in articles tagged that they're unsourced, or "let the reader beware."
A lot of the obvious solutions (all information has to be sourced) detract from what I see as the primary Wikipedia force that will eventually make it THE most useful site on the Internet: anyone can edit.
KP