[WikiEN-l] assessing

[David Gerard]

2009/9/11 Surreptitiousness <surreptitious.wikipedian at googlemail.com>:

> I think that depends upon your standards.  From my perspective, when you
> consider we're staffed by a bunch of volunteers who usually have to
> learn about the subject before they can write about it, we ain't doing
> bad. I think what a lot of frustration and drama on Wikipedia boils down
> to is that a lot of people think we're very near, or that we ought to be
> very near being a finished product.  Realistically, I think we're really
> only approaching the end of the middle of the initial stage. By which I
> mean the initial stage is to get as much written about as much as we can
> as possible.  The trouble is, we have other people who think we're at
> the end of the end stage, which I tend to think is about fifty years
> away if we are lucky. SO I guess it depends on your timescale.


I think the shock was realising this is the product. Yes, that live
working draft is the actual product. And this may actually be a
feature.

Distributions of Wikipedia content turn out to be secondary - the
working site turns out to be the actual product.

Flaged revs all through would separate "draft" and "public" copies,
but at the expense of the motivational effects of the working draft
being live and public.

There is no "inished". It's an eternal present.


> I tend
> to find I interact better with people playing the long game.  Even when
> we disagree, we don't fight about it, because what would be the point.
> Short game players are a nightmare though. Everything has to be done
> now! Someone might be watching now! At the end of the day we're a work
> in progress, and while it is great that the world wants to take us
> seriously, and it is important that we take ourselves seriously, we have
> to keep getting across the message that we are a work in progress, and
> our articles should never be used as a definitive source, but rather a
> pointer to a better understanding. Or something.


It's getting the world to understand that it's a work in progress, I suppose.


- d.