[WikiEN-l] Price we pay from the Deletionists: Y-Combinator looking to fund Wikipedia-like startup

[Todd Allen]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 4:49 PM, Achille <achille.listserv at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Price we pay from the Deletionists:
> Paul Graham's Y-Combinator is actively looking to fund Wikipedia-like
> startup that does away with them.
>
> See: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html (Ideas we are looking to sponsor)
>
>> 23. More open alternatives to Wikipedia. Deletionists rule Wikipedia. Ironically, they're constrained by print-era thinking. What harm does it do if an online reference has a long tail of articles that are only interesting to a few people, so long as everyone can still find whatever they're looking for? There is room to do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica.
>
> On that note, why don't we enable access to deleted content ? It's
> already there, we can just dump them nightly into a big file.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

"Wikipedia minus what quality control it manages to have" does not
sound like an attractive alternative to me, nor something I would use
in place of Wikipedia, but right to fork is inherent in all free
projects. If someone feels that such a project would be valuable, they
have every right to take a database dump and go in whatever direction
they want with it. I don't personally foresee its success, but I could
be wrong. If it is successful, more power to it, if not, then so be
it.

If I were looking at possible alternatives, I would say an alternative
with -better- quality control would be more likely to succeed than
something with less.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.