[Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

Wed Sep 15 19:46:56 UTC 2004

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
>>like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".
>>
>
>I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
>general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
>reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
>meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."
>
Which is potentially a good reason, but it's not the one that
Gerard gave; and I say "potentially" because although there is
some very obscure and detailed scientific info in WP already,
I have yet to see anybody seek to remove it because it's
"too detailed for a general audience". So why is it imperative
to have a new wiki to solve a hypothetical problem?

Whether a fork is good or bad depends on the real motivation,
not what it looks like when it's dressed up. I've been through
this a hundred times with various GNU projects, and you can't
understand what will happen unless you look squarely at what's
really driving people.

Stan