User talk: Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles
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Moving right along . . .
Item 2 states (in pertinent part):
"Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers."
Item 5 states (in pertinent part):
"Anyone who wants to use our content in a closed proprietary manner must be challenged. We must adhere very strictly to both the letter and spirit of the license."
Item 7 states (in pertinent part):
"Anyone with a beef should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. They should be encouraged constantly to present their problems in a constructive way in the open forum of the mailing list."
I've been involved in a number of purportedly open communities, and I've done my best to extol the virtues of the above-narrated principles in my role as one of the designated leaders of those communities. However, whenever openness really seems to matter, I have consistently encountered rhetoric in re the "practical limitations" of openness. Thankfully, Wikipedia seems to be free of this rhetoric. Is this rhetoric-free environment simply the genius of the Wikipedia community? Or are there procedural barriers in place to prevent charismatic tyrants from seizing control of Wikipedia?
- To toot my own horn, part of the reason for the clarity of the statement of principles is from pressure I brought to bear. I was an ODP editor who discovered the actual nature of the ODP when I challenged its structures of control. There are still some points of danger on Wikipedia, the number one probably being the mailing list and the current conception of NPOV being something that is achievable (see User:The Cunctator/How to build Wikipedia, which is the rah-rah version of User:The Cunctator/How to destroy Wikipedia, which had been a rant). One point of improvement that hasn't happened yet but supposedly will is an automatic process of granting people who have edited at Wikipedia for a while the "sysop" privileges. Right now it's done at the behest of the mailing list, which is a problem.
- To more directly answer your question, the procedural barrier is the totally plastic nature of WikiWiki. I think the best explication of that phenomenon is Sunir Shah's pages on SoftSecurity.
- And the final answer is that Jimbo Wales really gets how to run a project like this.--The Cunctator
In number 3 of your principles you speak of the open "and_viral_nature" of the GNU FDL license. Is the word "viral" a typographical error when you meant something else? It's hard to imagine that you would want the site full of viruses, but I'm not sure what you intended. Eclecticology
"viral" refers to anything, especially anything memetic, that propagates itself by attaching itself to something else. The GNU FDL is desirable precisely *because* it is viral, which in the context of a license means that it applies to derivative works, which are "infected" by the requirement to re-integrate changes deemed desirable by any party down the line. I.e. if you go to any derivative of the wikipedia whatsoever, you should be able, thanks to this "viral" license, to crib its text directly into the original wiki or any other wiki... without the "viral" license variant terms can apply to the forks, derivative works can be controlled commercially, etc. It's exactly the right term.
- Thanks for the explanation. I even think that I understand what you are saying, and have no problem with the underlying philosophy. My concern is probably more related to the power of words. In the public mind "virus" and "viral" have such overwhelmingly negative connotations (as distinct from denotations) that the simple appearance of the word can be a cause for alarm and concern. I'm confident that I'm not the only one that has required an explanation.
- I can nevertheless envision a public health parallel to the subject where perhaps the word "innoculated" is more appropriate than "infected". The medical innoculation too is based on an adapted biological virus. Eclecticology
- we should be highlighting rather than avoiding those parallels - for instance "genetic engineering" is a euphemism for "creating an artificial viral strand of DNA and injecting it semi-randomly into a genome by various mechanical means". I outlined the exact value of the GNU FDL in viral license - note that fear of the "virus" created the open source movement, which lacks the viral feature - and is thus seriously and fatally broken. THe viral feature is what matters about the GPL - it could have quite restrictive pricing, etc.,but as long as the terms were uniform it would work to unify a base of contributors. Open source is dangerous crap - simply spews bad code and bad copies with all kinds of separate licensing terms applying to its dead and dying body parts...
Open source is dangerous crap - Now who is being ideological now 24? -maveric149
- I didn't intend to troll for another "war of 24" when I started this discussion. I was only trying to see if one word was a typo. Now I know it wasn't. Instead the conversation became infected by a lawyer virus. The real underlying question is whether we believe knowledge to be public or proprietary. The subtleties that distinguish viral licenses and open source seem more and more like arcane lawyer talk suited for ecclesiastical councils. What matters more to me is limiting the right of corporatocracy to control knowledge. Eclecticology
I noted, in passing, your endorsement (in the WikiEN-l Archive) of some kind of mechanism for delayed visibility/effectiveness of edits. I'm glad to have seen this. It clearly contributes to the factors that make me keep the hope for Wikipedia. I returned to Wikipedia in April, and since then my impression (as stated in April) have been reinforced. The invitation to all readers to correct and amend articles is not necessarily injured by a delayed visibility. /Tuomas 19:27, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
