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

[Ray Saintonge]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 10/7/07 3:21 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote
>> One could get into a lot of semantic issues here.  There is a community
>> whose primary objective is to build an encyclopedia.
>>     
> Yes, Ray, but this community is made up of people with emotions. The most
> common cause of gridlock in the project is not the conflict of ideas - but
> of emotions.
>   
More precisely emotions dressed up as ideas.
> And, you can keep filling a building with stuff. But, unless you have a
> reliable, stable, consistent infrastructure to support it - and are
> constantly working to support and maintain that infrastructure - that
> building will eventually collapse.
>   
That sounds too much like my wife's complaint about my clutterholic book 
collecting habits.
> Much of the present thinking is not keeping pace with the reality.
>   
That has multiple aspects.  Among these is the inability of many people 
to think in big-picture terms.
> The thought suggested by someone else on this thread that, in essence, it
> doesn't matter if, or why, a person leaves the project there are always
> those to replace them - is bullshit. Once again we are reduced to expendable
> bodies building a monument to someone.
The theory of expendable bodies sometimes works well when you're trying 
to support an army with cannon fodder. :-(

Ec