More than maintaining the articles,and more than maintaining the group, the focus should be on maintain the continual and increasing development of new editors and new articles--not just as content creators, but as gnomes, and techies, and admins. The excitement of working here has not just been on our wide influence, but of _developing_ something that will have wide influence, and of developing it in a way which will be self- perpetuating. Many people and many groups have written encyclopedia, but very few have done as we have, developed a new way of creating them, and other material also.
This is not a finite project., and will remain a matter not just of replacement , but of further grown. Based on other human institutions, we are not likely to even attain a finished form or a finite bod of knowledge. I think that should be seen here also as what our goal should be. I don't want as much to continue what I do in Wikipedia , as to have others continue it , while I learn new things to do, and find people who will do things that I've not even dreamed of being capable of. If i have a choice between rescuing articles, or rescuing even one editor, It's the editor who matters--in the hope that they will write many articles and in their turn encourage yet more editors. We're an educational institution in two senses: we write educational material forv the world in general, and we educate each other. On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > On 16/10/2010 15:23, Marc Riddell wrote: >>> On 15/10/2010 22:36, MuZemike wrote: >>> >>> <snip> >>> >>>> That comes to my question regarding whether or not we are here to build >>>> an online community or an online encyclopedia. Should we focus outwards >>>> toward the reading/viewing audience, or should we focus inwards >>> towards the editors? >> on 10/16/10 9:01 AM, Charles Matthews at charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com >> wrote: >>> It was settled early on that we are writing an encyclopedia. Before I >>> started editing. What has happened since then? Well, we have had some >>> divas on the site who have thought that we should focus on things that >>> are basically all about them rather than the encyclopedia. And this has >>> been a strategy partially successful in its own terms. But fundamentally >>> I don't think such people have won the argument, however much harder >>> they may have made it to see the "community" as primarily a working >>> environment. That's what it remains, a highly interactive place in which >>> to do voluntary work on an encyclopedia. >>> >> No, Charles, an environment alone does not build an encyclopedia; or, for >> that matter, any other group project. There are two elements involved: the >> effort required to work on the substance and goals of the project, and an >> equal effort to build and maintain the group, yes, the "community" of >> persons collaborating to achieve the goals of the project. >> > Think what you like. The actual membership of the "group" has changed > much more than the pages on which matters are discussed, as places to > exchange views and information. You also are misreading what I said. > Where do I imply "alone"? > > Charles > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
