POSITIONKARTEN

ОБЪЯСНЕНИЯ УВЕ

ОБЪЯСНЕНИЯ ВИКТОРА

GEOLOCATOR

КАДАСТРОВЫЕ УЧАСТКИ РОССИИ

As other editors have suggested, there is no point in trying to fix anything now. Nothing can be done.

Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia; it is a grand social experiment. Experiments don't "fail" and I won't say WP is a failure. I'm not sure Jimbo had much of a goal in mind at the time of foundation so WP can hardly be said to have failed that, either. Various editors have had goals and some of them have been fulfilled; others have not. But WP was designed as a bus without a steering wheel and this cannot be bolted on retroactively. The experiment cannot even be terminated.

The results of the experiment, so far, are unastonishing:

• Humans, on average, are mediocre; if we are allowed to build without direction, we create mediocre works. If we are allowed to build for a long time, we create very large works, still, mediocre.
• Humans are contentious. We don't all agree on much; perhaps not on anything. We tend to meet disagreement with hostility and we would rather fight than compromise. We collude more than we collaborate.
• Humans are self-organizing and exclusive. Left to our own devices, freed of overlords and governments, we will create for ourselves the hells we have been spared. Given freedom, we enslave. If given a house of infinite size and no doors, we will erect doors, elect guards, and enact restrictions on entry, on movement, and on every activity. The house will be carved into gang territories, each bent on domination of the whole.
• Technology does not alter human nature. If you gather a large group of people on a plain with many stones and no plan, they will build a great heap of stones and many small, neat piles; but never a cathedral. If you gather a large group of people in a building with much high tech equipment and no plan, they will build a great, massive, inefficient machine and many small, neat toys; but never a Space Shuttle. If you gather a large group of people in cyberspace with many servers and virtual tools and no plan, they will build a great, huge pile of words and many small, neat process pages; but never an encyclopedia.

Those of us who wanted a free source of general information are content in inverse proportion to the standard of quality we desired. Those of us who wanted a society based on merit are disappointed. Those of us who wanted to build little cliques of ruthlessness are delighted.

WP cannot be fixed -- not the corpus of information, not the technology, not the community of editors. All suffer the accumulation of time. The editors who are most experienced with the technology are the ones who have invested most in creating and leading cliques. The technology which is most obscure shoulders the greatest burden of rendering the process workable. The sheer mass of information crushes any effort to improve quality or raise standards. And at this point, any initiative whatsoever will be hijacked by those who have the greatest skill at hijacking initiatives -- and the least interest in anybody else's goals.

Quite a few editors have seen all this and tried to start over again, elsewhere, with improvements of one sort or another. Many have seen the harsh truth: Humans are not basically good (or basically evil); we are mediocre in the mass. High quality and lofty goals must be built into a project at its very foundations; they cannot be expected to emerge, by magic, from ylem and chaos. These alternative projects have failed, or limped along on the margins, because the sheer mass and notoriety of Wikipedia excludes competition.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

The best thing that WMF could possibly do to further the stated goals of openness and, generally, breathing new life into the concept of a free, open encyclopedia would be to shut down Wikipedia. Get out of the way and let somebody else take a crack at it. Perhaps some other group will establish a project on a solid foundation, with some unalterable ground rules and some real leadership. If not today, then perhaps tomorrow.

However, even this is quite impossible. WP cannot be fixed; it cannot even be destroyed from within. The Tower of Babel was not torn down by repentant creators; it was destroyed by an external force. Eventually, one might hope, an external force will destroy WP. Until then, we all must suffer in the hell we have constructed for ourselves.

User:Xiong here

300px 300px 300px 300px

oeui --Das steinerne Herz

oeui --Das steinerne Herz

ouei --Das steinerne Herz

ouii --Das steinerne Herz

МЕНЮ

• Жанры игрового кино
• Список фильмов на лесбийскую тематику

ПРОЧАЯ СПИСКОМАНИЯ

• Президент Королевского общества
• Список президентов Бразилии