[WikiEN-l] Chrome Pussycats, Twiddlers & Whackjobs

Thu Mar 3 00:59:27 UTC 2005

Richard Holton wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:04:14 -0500, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

>>Think of Wikipedia as a massive garage where you can build any car you
>>want to. Great tools are provided, a lot of shop manuals are there, and
>>you get your own lift and away you go. Fantastic. But every one else,
>>and I mean everyone else in the garage can work on your car with you.
>>There's no "lead mechanics", no "shop floor managers", no anything. In
>>fact, the people who are allowed to work on your car can completely
>>disregard what you were doing with it. They could have flown in from
>>Boola-Boola Island 2 hours ago, not know the language, can't read the
>>manuals, and just go in and paint your car pink. And drive it. And leave
>>it somewhere. Now, since tools are free and paint is free and you can
>>easily go and retrieve your nice car and get it back to something
>>resembling sanity, a lot of the people in the garage see there's no
>>problems. But in fact, the fifth, or the hundredth time you're traipsing
>>down the lane to find your messed-up, polka-dotted,
>>covered-in-chrome-pussycats car, you're kind of inclined to drive it
>>into the lake and leave it upside down, wheels spinning.

> Except...it's not your car!

That would be the key point, yes. That's what "no article ownership" means.

- d.