[WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

Wed Mar 30 17:46:12 UTC 2005

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > How many "respected encyclopedias" are updated on a day-by-day basis 
> > like Wikipedia is, with a front page that shows current events within 
> > minutes of their happening and then the next day replaces them with 
> > something else newer? 
> 
> The process by which we create the encyclopedia this encyclopedia is
> irrelevant. What is relevant is that it is an encyclopedia (the mass majority
> of our users never edit).

The process is entirely relevant. Wikipedia would be a very poor encylopedia
indeed without its Wiki-based community -- Nupedia? Your argument here makes
little sense -- you might equally say that we should remove the "Edit this
page" link because "no other reputable encyclopedia has it".

Fun brings the community together, and the community builds the encyclopedia.
If the joke is harmless and transient, I don't see how we lose here.

-- Matt

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