[Wikipedia-l] Some confusion about 'meta'

Fri Jan 31 12:21:48 UTC 2003

There appears to be some confusion about the history and purpose of
meta.  This is easy to understand, because meta evolved over time.

In the early days, there was a lot of talk *about wikipedia* *on
wikipedia*.  We didn't have user pages in the early software, all
pages were the same kind of page.  So it happened that we were having
lots of discussion and debate on the wikipedia about the wikipedia,
and it was clogging up recentchanges and generally getting in the way
of work.

So we decided to move all the 'meta-discussion' (i.e. discussion about
wikipedia) to meta.wikipedia.com.  This meant, of course, that meta
allowed for non-NPOV essays, etc.

Later, user pages were invented, and so that became a more sensible
place for SOME non-NPOV essays on meta-topics.  But meta is still
useful, as a place for non-user-specific meta-discussion.

Except, as a practical matter, the major meta discussion is now here,
on the mailing lists.

Whatever meta is, it is *not* necessarily the same thing as an
experimental wiki for the running of the latest code.  It is a
fine place for discussing the future of the software, I suppose,
although wikitech-l is more important for that right now.

--Jimbo