[Wikipedia-l] Re: Permament deletions without reason

Mon Nov 5 16:19:13 UTC 2001

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Another class of pages for which total deletion makes sense would be
> for legitimate page titles with totally nonsensical content.  A total
> deletion is better than a page clearing, because it restores the ?
> link on pages that may mention this page, thus alerting us that it
> needs fixing.
> 
> For example, a couple of days ago I noticed that we didn't have a page
> on Colin Powell, while reading a page about the current effort.  If
> there had been a blank page there, I would not have noticed it, and we
> wouldn't have that content now.

That can be solved. Software must be changed so that blank pages
have a ? link.

> > 2) Are the deletions tracked (even if not available to the public) in
> > any way? Is there any way that it can be determined which administrator
> > has deleted a file (eg: usernames, IP addresses)? If not, is there any
> > reason why there shouldn't be in the future?
> 
> I think it is obvious that pretty much nothing should be done in secret.
> 
> > of Wikipedia, which is probably Bomis' biggest asset.
> 
> Well, not really.  Wikipedia traffic is extraordinarily tiny compared
> to our other properties.  Nonetheless, I do think Wikipedia is
> exciting and promising.

I think the idea was that, in this project, the biggest asset of
Bomis is the "Wikipedia reputation". Not the content, but the
reputation. I would say that there are two important assets for
Bomis here:

1 - wikipedia reputation
2 - wikipedia community 

That's what Bomis must preserve. Others can use the same content
to build a similar project, but they would not have the same
reputation and the same community.

-- 
joão
http://www.nonio.com