The Cunctator (cunctator@kband.com) [050422 23:49]:
On 4/22/05 7:19 AM, "David Gerard" fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
The Cunctator (cunctator@kband.com) [050422 20:47]:
It's really too bad that "How to Destroy Wikipedia" seems to have gone down the Memory Hole, because it's a fine example of me pouring gasoline on a fire (in short, it was the inflammatory, negative version of "How to Build Wikipedia" but you'd have to read it to understand) out of frustration and an unfortunate tendency toward sarcastic fatalism.
http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Cunctator/How_to_destro... Wikipedia&action=history
Whew--that was really abrasive, nigh abusive. What was interesting is that even though I totally pissed off and hurt both Jimbo and Larry with it, I was able to mend fences with Jimbo once I convinced him I didn't mean to attack him personally, was sorry for hurting him, and had both honest concerns and a desire to make Wikipedia better. I was never able to convince Larry I wasn't attacking him personally.
I hope you have nicer thoughts towards our lovely developers now as well! As they freely point out, the way to get the software changed the way you want is to write the features you think are missing ... note at least one case (Tim Starling) of an editor turning almost entirely to MediaWiki development and Wikimedia sytem administration because there just weren't enough people doing it.
(For all the talk of Wikipedia being "the encyclopedia Slashdot built," I'm suspecting we have far less computer people than we do arts people editing. Or more would idly turn their hand to MediaWiki. I'm learning PHP specifically so I can do evil things to the software, first for myself then for all you lovely people.)
- d.