Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com> wrote:

So Jimbo wasted his money paying Larry to lead the Wikipedia project its first
year? IMO, that is one of the main reasons why the whole enterprise took off.
Larry did a hell of a lot of work publicizing Wikipedia, recruiting
contributors, creating/shaping policy (such as NPOV) and resolving disputes.

>> But Larry wasnt hired for his philosophy - rather for his mediation and administration. >>Ths was a valid and perhaps essential decision by JW -- youll get no disagreement >>from me.

We now have a strong enough community and already written polices and a sense
of ourselves that that is not really needed for already established wikis.
But at the same time many of the smaller Wikipedias could use somebody to
perform the major, not so fun (and lonely at first), basic organizing and
promotion that Larry did for the English Wikipedia. That will dramatically
decrease the amount of time needed for a project to become viable on its own.
Having no useful wiki in certain languages is far more anti-wiki to me.

>>Yes-- this is a very important point and Im glad you made it.  I had thought that

>>perhaps the English WP had gotten an advantage in terms of Larry-- and that this 

>>is in part the reason for a disproportion between article counts. But this is not

>>a very valid point to make--things happen the way they do.

A few hundred bucks a month to kick start a new Wikipedia version would be
money well-spent if we had a million bucks (part timers on limited term
contracts would be best). But any blood money from Bill and Melinda would
probably have strings attached so I don't think we would accept it.

>>I dont think there would be any strings at all. At least this is my version of that >>particular pipedream :-)

 

Yes, but they do what they want, not necessarily what is most needed. I'm not
convinced that hiring any academic for currently active wikis would do much
good. I'm concerned about kick-starting smaller wikis and optimizing
MediaWiki. The developers already have said that they either do not have time
for that or the knowledge to do it right. So let's pay an expert to do it.

>>I was wondering... I know our cadre of Dev's are top notch, but they still WFF and are >>limited in terms of what they can do. But paying someone would only be a temp thing, >>in almost all cases, unless youre counting on massive philanthropy or making money.

I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and Arabic Wikipedias are still so
small. I also think it is tragic that many languages around the world are
dying and that Wikipedia could be used to help save them by hooking the
younger speakers into writting articles in their language.

>>Youll get no argument from me-- I ve got more edits by far on Ar.wiki and I dont even
>>read Arabic!  (solicitations for help have been tepid.)

If that takes having to fork over some cash to kick-start a wiki, then so be
it. If it can be done without it, then that is even better. But I doubt it
can be done as quickly.

>>Yes I agree with you fully-- I think you make a good point. 

>>~S~