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

[Charles Matthews]

On 19/01/2011 00:05, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 18 January 2011 10:56, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>  wrote:
>> 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.
> Well, I think you answered the implicit question: naive "mission
> statements" involving terms like "sum of all knowledge" aren't of much
> practical use.
>
Questionable, really. WP's success has a lot to do with combining the 
naive outlook with the practical: making the idealistic outline into 
comprehensible activities people can actually go and do right now. 
Remember the site has got this far without any management to speak of 
(as far as content is concerned) ...

Charles