[Wikipedia-l] Statement of principles

[Michael Snow]

Just making sure there's no confusion. The statement of principles in 
Anthere's response to Ec is taken from the page of User:Jimbo Wales. 
Presumably Anthere was using it to save Jimbo the work of responding to 
Ec personally, since Ec's post can be seen as a bit of a challenge to 
Jimbo's ideas about the project.

To clarify the point that apparently caused Chris some confusion--"The 
topic of Wikipedia articles should always look outward not inward at the 
Wikipedia itself."--I would interpret this as saying that Wikipedia 
content should be independent of, and normally not discuss, internal 
Wikipedia/Wikimedia politics and management issues. The primary forum 
for that discussion should be the mailing lists.

Anyway, I suppose now is as good a time as any to haul those principles 
out once again and debate them. On that particular point, I believe that 
Wikimedia will eventually become "a large and famous organization" as 
Jimbo recently put it (and perhaps more quickly than he suggests). And 
as the depth and breadth of our content increases, some of the things 
that seem internal now will warrant treatment in the encyclopedia that 
Wikipedia aspires to be. After all, what happens when some journalist or 
historian writes a book about the story of Wikipedia, whether the book 
be a hatchet job or hagiography? You can't just ignore it (nor do we, 
judging by how carefully we follow our press coverage).

Fortunately, the mailing lists and page histories are all, or almost 
all, archived, for the benefit of whoever wants to tackle that task.

--Michael Snow