Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Nupedia

[Mike Warren]

Jimmy Wales <address@hidden> writes:

> By the way, we have been debating and working hard for a year on
> many of the issues that have already been touched on this list.  We
> have settled on an XML dtd, though our implementation leaves a lot
> to be desired.  We have put together open review groups, peer
> reviewers, editors, etc.  There is room for everyone, and there is a
> *lot* of work to be done.

I checked out the Nupedia site, but couldn't see a place for people
interested in the coding and data representation; are such interests
needed? Is the code under the GPL? Where do I look for this
information?

> Yes!  One of the struggles that we have faced within the Nupedia
> community is the delicate balance between openness and review.  In
> ESR's terminology, this may be seen as a tension between the
> cathedral and the bazaar.

I'm not sure that less restrictions on content are always better,
especially in these encyclopedia situations.  Certainly it is useful
to be as inclusive to contributions as possible, but a large part of
the value of an encyclopedia is not what's in it but what's left out;
every time I consult one, I don't want to dig through lots and lots of
questionable content to get to the nugget of information I desire.

I think this may help explain the popularity of Web-logs; once you
find one which closely matches your interests, you no longer have the
entire Web of potentially interesting sites: someone has already done
a bunch of filtering for you.

Of course, some sort of interesting way to allow individual users of
the online encyclopedia to automatically filter most (ideally,
``all'') of the content they won't find useful might allow all content
to be included, yet still retain the advantages of well-edited and
pertinent content.

It is indeed a tough problem, and certainly a delicate balancing act:
too much exclusion might scare off both contributers and users while
too little might make the result far less useful.

However, I would say that editing out questionably-useful posts
through some distributed approval network of a sufficient number of
people is a very good idea, and would make the resulting encyclopedia
that much more useful.

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