[WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales post on Huffington Post

[Brian]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 3:17 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> An objectivist in a liberal blog? It happens.
>
>
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmy-wales/what-the-msm-gets-wrong-a_b_292809.html
>
> (It's a piece about our remarkably accuracy-deficient coverage in the
> media in the last month or so. What happens when there's nothing to
> write about and people like me end up on telly.)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
Wasn't the order of operations here like so:

* BLP issues. Anyone can say anything about anyone alive on one of the most
popular websites in the world and it gets published.
* Foundation pays tens of thousands of dollars to develop a technology that
allows edits to be reviewed before being posted
* Some negative press and complaints, but not that much since it hasn't been
widely publicized.
* Community discussion starts on en.wp with lots of involvement by JW
* More and more press, people start noticing that it's actually quite a big
shift from the original encyclopedia that anyone could edit *in realtime*
* Further community discussion with lots of critics and negative press. It
becomes necessary to "spin" the conversation in the direction of not only
increased responsibility, but also increased openness.
* Conversation eventually turns mostly towards convincing people that this
actually makes wikimedia more open, while also making it more responsible.


It's hard to follow everything that goes on here, but I distinctly remember
when FlaggedRevisions was developed, and per my recollection openness was
not one of the original arguments that caused the foundation to contract its
development. If anyone knows more than me and cares to clear up my
misconceptions, that'd be great.