[Wikipedia-l] Phase III name change to MediaWiki and separate press releases

[Daniel Mayer]

Erik wrote:
>....
>As we become more popular, inevitably, these same  
>problematic suggestions and others will be made more 
>often. But we're a large community, with many thoughtful 
>members like yourself who are aware of the problems, 
>and I just don't see us doing anything stupid just because 
>we become larger.
>....

I agree. 

What I've noticed is that as we get more and more contributors we get more and 
more eyeballs checking each edit. So even though the number of bad edits has 
increased greatly (which is alarming to some), their percentage of the total 
has not changed and IMO has gone down over time. So far this has scaled 
really well. 

The only problem times are when we are being hit hard due to media exposure. 
Then the number of Anon edits increases dramatically; most are good to great 
edits but a certain percentage are bad; all have to be checked anyway which 
is taxing on old hands (thus the need for the Fire Dept). But after a day or 
two things settle down and we get a new group of user accounts and a certain 
percentage of these become old hands in no time and Wikipedia is all the 
better due to new talent and energy. This also seems to scale very well. 

Well-timed and prepared-for media exposure is an investment that pays great 
dividends. We should not be afraid of it (esp now that the Foundation can 
take donations; we should also seek tax-exempt status in other nations too - 
every bit helps).  

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)