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