[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM, wiki <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> But..... where we are in competition with others is for the time of the
> undergraduate/graduate who sits down to squander some time on the internet.
> He's got any number of choices - what we draw him to Wikipedia and make him
> stick around? I wonder that the downturn in Wikipedia contributions is due
> largely to their being more "grown up" social networking phenomena than
> there were in 2004. Now, it is tempting to say that the fact that the
> "myspacers" have buggered off is not bad thing - but I wonder how many
> intelligent, educated people are now squandering time on Facebook who once
> might have been Wikipedia contributors?

I've had similar thoughts, but more general, thinking that the
internet in general has more potential for people to "waste their
time" than ever before. How many scientific theorems and great books
and works of art are going to be left undone because people are
wasting their time on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and the like (and
all the other websites and other online distractions out there)? You
would *hope* that the truly exceptional in each generation avoid such
traps and fulfil their potential, harnessing the power of the internet
rather than being sucked into a churning maw, but you never know. And
yes, I do think being a Wikipedia editor is more productive than using
Facebook and Twitter. :-)

Carcharoth