[WikiEN-l] oopsie-- mainstream journalists trust Wikipedia again

[Michael Noda]

On 10/7/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 10/7/07 12:22 PM, Christiano Moreschi at moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk
> wrote:
>
> > I don't know, Marc. Wikipedia is not a closed "community": it is such an open
> > one, with people entering and leaving all the time, that it is questionable
> > whether the editing "community" is really worthy of the name.
> >
> > Obviously, some editors are worth trying to retain, but losing people is
> > scarcely a problem for us. We can simply draft in a new population or two.
> >
> That is a sad state, Christiano. Perhaps that is why the reliability and
> consistency of the Project is so much in question in the larger world.

Why is it a sad state?  That statement strikes me like saying that the
United States or Canada is a weak and untrustworthy country because it
keeps attracting immigrants; it's patently absurd.  The attractiveness
of the project to new volunteers should never be used as an attack on
it; quite the opposite, I think our continued success relies on
maintaining our ability to attract good new editors from outside the
"community".