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