Pride matters, arrogance is harmful. What we have achieved is to demonstrate that legitimate, free, open, collaborative knowledge is to be taken seriously, and some knowhow about its creation and maintenance. That's not a reason for arrogance and does not mean we are "best" or have some kind of guarantee for future.
Commercially, enterprises often flourish in an ecosystem of similar enterprises or related needs. Those lacking competitors and alternatives tend over years and decades to become lazy, inefficient, and complacent. Those with others around have the "best the rest of the world can devise" to measure up to, compare with, and provoke improvement. Like others have said, we need others around. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but for the future. FT2 On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 9:12 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 21 December 2010 20:51, George Herbert <george.herb...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a > > tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I > > can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me. > > > It's annoying, because we need competitors. Being a monopoly is not > good for us and is not good for the mission. Here's something I sent > to foundation-l yesterday (no responses so far): > > > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> > Date: 20 December 2010 20:59 > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Tendrl to Knowino > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org> > > > On 20 December 2010 19:47, Noein <prono...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Is there a general consensus about achieving a monopoly as a good goal. > > Is this part of some public strategy? Is this the position of WMF? Of > > chapters? > > I thought I heard some weeks ago on that mail list that diversity is > > good. That competitors are healthy. Could we have a clarification of > > positions about this? > > > I can't speak for anyone but myself - but I think, and I've seen many > others who express an opinion think, that competition would be good > and monopoly as *the* encyclopedia is not intrinsically a good thing. > > The big win would be to make proper free content licenses - preferably > public domain, CC-by, CC-by-sa, as they're the most common - the > *normal* way to distribute educational and academic materials. Because > that would fulfill the Foundation mission statement - > > "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in > the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." > > - without us having to do every bit of it. And really, that mission > statement cannot be attained unless we make free content *normal and > expected*, and everyone else joins in. > > Furthermore, being *the* encyclopedia is mostly a headache for us. > Wikipedia wasn't started with the aim of running a hugely popular > website, whose popularity has gone beyond merely "famous", beyond > merely "mainstream", to being part of the assumed background. We're an > institution now - part of the scenery. This has made every day for the > last eight years a very special "wtf" moment technically. It means we > can't run an encyclopedia out of Jimbo's spare change any more and > need to run fundraisers, to remind the world that this institution is > actually a rather small-to-medium-sized charity. > > (I think reaching this state was predictable. I said a few years ago > that in ten years, the only encyclopedia would be Wikipedia or > something directly derived from Wikipedia. I think this is the case, > and I don't think it's necessarily a good thing.) > > So I'd say, no - monopoly isn't a goal for us, it's something that's > happened. We need to encourage everyone else to take on the goal of > our mission with their own educational, scientific, academic etc > materials. We can't change the world all on our own. > > The next question is what to do about this. Deliberately crippling > Wikipedia would be silly, of course. But encouraging the propagation > of proper free content licences - which is somewhat more restrictive > than what our most excellent friends at Creative Commons do, though > they're an ideal organisation to work with on it - directly helps our > mission, for example. > > As I said, I can't speak for anyone else, but if anyone here disagrees > I'm open to correction on any of the above. > > > - d. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
