phoebe ayers wrote: > The Wikipedia story is not exciting because of any single person's > contributions to the projects; it's the aggregate over time that > matters, and outside of the larger context of the project, none of our > contributions (no matter how much, or how little) are worth much. > (Founding doesn't mean much if other people don't run with it; and > contributing to a wiki doesn't get you very far if others don't also > build the web). I think the interesting point here is something like "when but more particularly how does the [[founder effect]] wear off?" Microsoft is now post-Gates, in one sense. The WMF is obviously post the "Wales and Sanger show", in another. Arguably wikis can evolve rather faster than corporations (but certainly they don't always). Wikipedia has been particularly dynamic in an evolutionary sense, but on the other hand there have been people heard to say that it is now hard to change it (I did, last year ...). Maybe we're more like a "swarm of gnats" (http://www.keithhilen.com/Java/Gnats/Gnats.html).
Anyway, that's flesh on the bones of my earlier argument: the history isn't bunk, but the place became sufficiently complicated at least five years ago for the echoes of the early day to have become distinctly muffled. Charles _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
