[WikiEN-l] Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

Mon Oct 3 06:56:33 UTC 2005

Michael Snow wrote

> That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and 
> potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than 
> creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on 
> the internet.

Well, we create stuff that is

(a) in a comprehensible, readable standardised format and neutrally written
(b) which uses hypertext intensively rather than randomly to 'footnote'
(c) and, very importantly for technical areas, filling in the background on 
technical terms, not assuming expertise.

If all we did was to present such a sane, pre-chewed version of what already 
exists on the WWW, it would already be a big deal.

I don't for a moment believe that _is_ all we do, and license into the 
public domain.  For example, on bibliographies of authors, I think WP tends 
to the systematic generation of lists of works that exists spottily 
elsewhere.  The  systematic interwikiness cuts across the language bias of 
the Web to English.

Charles 