[WikiEN-l] Long-term searchability of the internet

[Charles Matthews]

On 17/01/2011 15:30, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> I suppose my problem here is understanding how the discussion goes
> from<the useful part of the web is expanding faster than we can keep
> up>  to<there is a problem with this>.

I believe the "mission statement" approach to WP would necessarily find 
troubles with this phenomenon. Of course we can take the "sum of all 
knowledge" (online and offline) with a pinch of salt; that's what 
mission statements are for. But notice that the built-in inclusionism of 
addressing the issue that way has the practical effect of forcing us to 
build up expertise and criteria. CSD and notability guidelines are there 
to solve (for example) the issue of "garage bands with a MySpace page 
aren't necessarily encyclopedic", but not that issue alone. Across broad 
areas some sifting goes on.

> On deep and semantic web, these are useful concepts that will help us
> to develop more capable data mining tools, but not essential for our
> task at hand, which is to present a particular subset of structured,
> organized human knowledge.
We must look both at the "blue sky research" approach, and the pragmatic 
business of presenting a properly edited and categorised piece of 
hypertext to the world, in real time. If we treat the mining options as 
essentially irrelevant, we are planning our own obsolescence.
> Knowledge is social. We evaluate data as part of a collaboration
> (Wikipedia merely provides a framework for exploiting this universal
> human activity). It is unavoidable and irreducible. There is nowhere
> online a hidden trove of knowledge that we can use without first
> exposing it to evaluation. And we already have far more potentially
> useful data than we can ever evaluate so it's a bit pointless worrying
> about the invisible net in general. Better to use top down methods to
> identify likely sources (some of which are currently invisible).
Well, I agree with the last part, since it fits in with my approach as 
of today. WP can still usefully gobble down existing old reference 
material, and if that is done by making it visible on Wikisource on the 
way, so much the better. Given the reactions of others to this concept, 
I think you'd be wise to admit that "evaluation" is pluralistic in nature.

Charles