[Foundation-l] Muijzenberg #00 - (re)organizing wikimedia

Mon Jun 12 15:26:22 UTC 2006

on Sun. 11 June - Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote in part:

>I'm a newbie to this list, so I'll ask questions first, clueless as they
>might seem to be. And maybe come up with a proposal later on.
>
>
>Erik vdMb aka Muijz
>_______________________________________________

Erik! - I'm a newbie too!  And judging from your impressive email address, you certainly have to be a more qualified participant than I.  Anyway, I was under the impression that boldness was encouraged.  Perhaps the remainder of this email will put that tenant to the test and at the same time merit your sincerely sought commentary as well.  So -like you- I start with a question.

Isn't "a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" a sufficiently gallant goal to go far??  I submit that if one thinks about it, a lousy 1% of said knowledge would unavoidably result in world peace and the elimination of poverty.  Yet, in this instance, it's not at all insane to shoot for an impossible goal, but instead - wholly inspiring.  Yet in stark contrast to any real respect for a grand knowledge quest, there seem to be an overriding concern for things like copyright infringement, libel, and pornography.  But lets be just a bit real here - OK?  I mean, the sum of *ALL* human knowledge is clearly nothing for the (freedom hating) squeamish!  How could such grim enlightenment avoid bitterly breaking illusion loving minds?  And how is it possible to even imagine approaching your goals without unleashing an irrational world of resentment.  You're barely out of the gate on this great venture, yet you've already put your head under the boot of the archenemy of truth & knowledge - the state.  How can you serve both at the same time?  Perpetually appeasing government only makes a complete sham of your proclaimed goal.  Of course, in all practicality, very few will ever notice notice any farce.  The easiest way to maintain a semblance of integrity is to simply & truthfully state your real goal as "... the sum of politically permitted pseudo knowledge."

Alternately, if you decide to be true to your original idea in more than just lip service, it may not be too late to do so.  First and always, you'd need to distance your core knowledge bases just as morally far from coercive terrestrial jurisdictions as possible.  This may translate to new innovations in P2P technology plus extending other realms of the virtual frontier.  A big deal should be made about this being a wide open knowledge/data source with crude uncensored content; which is hence likely to be inappropriate, unreliable, and offensive for unprotected users.  (Although this sounds terrible, in reality your material would actually meet and exceed anything to date in both quantity and quality.)  In order to satisfy both huge traffic demands and a multiplicity of special censoring needs (for schools, local jurisdictions, etc.) third party prettifiers would be welcomed to provide such services and accommodate sensitivities.  Indeed, a spin-off of WMF with a portion of its server farms could well become just such a service.  Consequently, the the core knowledge/data bases would stress securing, creation & development of content plus powerful robust interfacing to the third party distributors (not heavy traffic to end users).

Obviously anything that could possibly endanger accumulating the sum of all human knowledge (like a WP:OFFICE) would need to be eliminated or spun-off.  The UNIX strategy is an attractive model; clean autonomous modules robustly interacting while executing their specific duties to perfection.

So if one believes your stated goal is sufficiently worthy then stick to that and give up the extra distraction of leaping through the status quo's endless obstacle course of insane hoops.  There are plenty (freedom blind entities) out there who are much more suitable for such silliness.  Haplessly there is noting easier than to ignore these kinds of essential meta-realities.  Equally unfortunate is the inevitability that follows.  No CEO nor board games will change the fact that your freedom serving mission is infeasible when immersed in an inhospitable coercion controlled world.  ESCAPE!

Z.Clark