[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

Wed Mar 9 04:19:24 UTC 2005

Yay! Thanks for stating this so succinctly.

--Cecropia

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org, wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 11:16:21 -0800

> 
> Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
> free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
> person on the planet in their own language.  Asking whether the
> community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong
> question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.
> 
> I don't know of any real case where there is a genuine strong tension
> between these two things, either.  That is to say, the central core of
> the community, the people who are really doing the work, are virtually
> all quite passionate on this point: that we're creating something of
> extremely high quality, not just goofing around with a game of online
> community with no purpose.
> 
> The community does not come before our task, the community is
> organized *around* our task.  The difference is simply that decisions
> ought to always be made not on the grounds of social expediency or
> popular majority, but in light of the requirements of the job we have
> set for ourselves.
> 
> I do not endorse the view, a view held as far as I know only by a very
> tiny minority, that Wikipedia is anti-elitist or anti-expert in any
> way.  If anything, we are *extremely* elitist but anti-credentialist.
> That is, we seek thoughtful intelligent people willing to do the very
> hard work of getting it right, and we don't accept anything less than
> that.  PhDs are valuable evidence of that, and attracting and
> retraining academic specialists is a valid goal.
> 
> There may be some cases of PhDs who think that no one should edit
> their expert articles, but there are many many more cases of
> completely unqualified people who think the same thing.  It doesn't
> matter: if someone can't work in a friendly helpful way in a social
> context, that's a problem for them and for us, and we'll always have
> to make some very complex judgments about what to do about it.
> 
> I'm 100% committed to a goal of "Britannica or better" quality for
> Wikipedia, and all of our social rules should revolve around that.
> Openness is indispensible for us, but it is our *radical* means to our
> radical *ends*.
> 
> --Jimbo
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