2008/12/22 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxw...@gmail.com>: > On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 5:38 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> (A tangential note: I consider NPOV to be our most important >> innovation - much more radical than merely letting anyone edit your >> encyclopedia. The concept of "neutrality" has existed in various >> guises, but not like Wikipedia does it, with the consequences it has >> as a source of information for the world.) > Full agreement. > My view on WP innovations: > (1) NPOV information resource. I'm thinking of things like areas that never got NPOV coverage *ever*. Scientology is a good example - pro-Scientology sources are saccharine and tend to leave out bits of great concern to the critics, and the critical sources have lots of well-sourced information but are so *bitter* they're all but unreadable. en:wp has some of the very best information available on the topic. > (2) Website with a permanent historical record (we're not the first, > but the first popular). What others are there? > (3) Large scale free-content useful reference. I'd put that below "anyone can edit" - (3) wasn't true until the last two or three years. In 2004, when I started, en:wp was a somewhat-useful source on computing topics, but very much one big stub on most things. Now it's actually useful in all sorts of places. (During the recent IWF/[[:en:Virgin Killer]] furore, our crappy work proxy blocked *all* Wikipedia reading because of the block on the page. And we felt the effects, because Wikipedia is such a good first reference work on computing topics.) > (4) Website anyone can edit. > There are all sorts of interdependencies between these and other > differentiators— It's easy to argue that without (4) the rest wouldn't > be possible… but in terms of the lasting impact on society and our own > uniqueness I think those are ordered about right. - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l