Best cases
From Meta
Best cases are probably scaled-down visions or the opposite of your most-dreaded threats. They may, also, really be your own best vision of where The future of Wikipedia might lead. Don't be conservative. What you write here should really be your own personal best idea of where it could go, and what would personally motivate you to work hard with people you hate, for no money, to achieve it.
The status quo is assessed in terms of worst cases - no one cares if you believe a best case is being achieved and if they did they wouldn't be checking the status quo - but threats, visions and best cases help provide context and most imporantly set vocabulary in which the status quo is described. Nothing original can be said in status quo - if it isn't mentioned in one of the other files it can't be mentioned there.
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[edit] Short term
[edit] Dedicated admins
The Militia, 20 users granted sysop status, defend the users' visions to the near-death and all of these best cases are realized, and none of the threats come to pass.
[edit] Full representation
The ideal Wikipedia board is actually recruited and represents a range of cultures and biases, especially with respect to what or who is a 'person', and how authorship and anonymity should be handled. These honest differences are settled with open debate and non-unanimous consensus, and wikipedia authors are generally comfortable with the level of security of person guaranteed by policy.
[edit] Sensitivity to other points of view
Hard to follow, but what about just the best case of w:symbiosis between trolls and even absurd sysops (within limits) more or less as they discuss here?
[edit] Long term
[edit] Lasting success
The Wikipedia project continues to evolve. Its success is sufficient to be useful as a prototype/reference for derivative applications or projects seeking startup funding via traditional methods, volunteerism, or some viable combination. user:mirwin
[edit] Virtue as its own reward
The anti-globalization movement respects wiki as a neutral point of view and doesn't flood it with 3000 versions of natural point of view all at once. Instead, they recognize that their views are treated with as much respect as funded published academics, and help work out a rigorous protocol for dealing with unpublished or unpublishable literature, work that challenges the validity of science itself, or calls for ends to professions. The wiki becomes an icon of fairness for all those with heretical views, but somehow never becomes anathema to academics, who check it to see that their work is fairly represented, fix minor errors, and get into good "talk" with their most fervent opponents.
Wiki gradually becomes the center of discourse on controversial topics because of its vaunted fairness and its commitment to approaching as close to a natural point of view as the neutral point of view of the target three billionth user will permit. Other encylopedias gradually give up or are bought out by donors who like wiki — and wiki, rather than a search engine, becomes the first stop for most researchers.
Gradually, universities fade away as centers of research but flourish as centers of ethical training, moral example, brainstorming, wild and uninhibited art, and true creative vision. Nobel Prize winners thank wiki on the stand as they accept their rewards, and historians credit it with breaking down barriers between academic, populist, and economic views.
[edit] Extended future
[edit] Holism
The foundation ontology of each major culture is described, e.g. the particle physics standard model which serves as the particle physics foundation ontology for other sciences, medieval Catholic foundation ontology, classical Chinese foundation ontology, etc., and likewise for each cosmology. Strong respect for the terms used in each culture brings the best scholars in the world here. Constant effort keeps vocabulary manageable, and under 4000-5000 words for introductory articles - those with the shortest names. The three billionth user comes to the wiki in 2007 with English as a second language, very little time and a low bandwidth connection, and walks away with the most useful description of an ecologically-sensitive garden they could possibly have got in that time...
[edit] The History of Wikipedia
Before Wikipedia was created, many people communicated by something known as the Internet, which can be thought of as a primitive form of Wikipedia. However, the Internet had many severe limitations, such as the inability of anyone, other than the original author, to correct outdated information on the Internet. Also, it was often hard to find useful information.
At the time of Wikipedia’s creation, it was actually only a small part of the whole Internet. It was originally intended to be an encyclopædia, where anyone could edit any information anytime. Although it is now hard for us to imagine that there could be a piece of information which people can't edit, at that time, it was actually a relatively new idea. Even so, editing was very limited in scope, time-intensive and required direct connection to the Internet. This information was divided into articles; each article had a different name, separating it from other discreet and seemingly unrelated articles. Links between articles were also added manually, and the content of these articles were further limited in scope since they could only contain text and pictures. To add to the general confusion, it was even possible for an individual contributor to accidentally add inconsistent or redundant information.
Despite these limitations, Wikipedia was by far the most effective system available, and therefore quickly became popular Internet destination for academics and researchers, as well as the general public. However, due to its free nature, Wikipedia met opposition in these early years from many large companies, which relied on patents and copyrights for profit.
One such (then-megalithic) computer company, called Microsoft, openly criticized Wikipedia and announced that they would not support Wikipedia. Soon after, they released a browser called Wikipedia Explorer. Unfortunately, this release was already too late to prevent them from going out of business, since by then most people had already switched to Wikipedia-friendly operating systems such as Linux, and using popular browsers, such as Wikera.
Later, several other for-profit companies compiled a list of copyright violations and obtained a court order in an attempt to shut down Wikipedia. However, on the day of the trial in country known as the United States (US), wikipedians actually did shut down all US-based Wikipedia servers, and blocked all traffic between the US and other “foreign” Wikipedia servers. Ironically, with all of the US-based Wikipedia shut down, the court had no choice but to drop the case since they had no way to access the case files. Later that day, the US-based Wikipedia was then restored. To avoid similar embarrassment, all pending European court cases against Wikipedia were also dropped.
Equally ironic, a terrorist attack, considered to be the single largest simultaneous one in history, occurred on Wikipedia day in the same year Wikipedia was celebrating having replaced 90% of the Internet. Although no one was hurt directly by this action, all 375 major Wikipedia servers worldwide were simultaneously destroyed by time-delayed explosives. This simultaneous destruction of all major Wikipedia servers caused pings of up to 20 seconds, and most video and virtual reality interfaces failed due to lack of bandwidth. This left only about 700 major wikivision channels still broadcasting worldwide.
In the wake of this tragic event, it has been estimated that tens of thousands of deaths resulted through cascading events; for instance, the crashing of public transport crashed, patients dying after their doctors were disconnected curing operations, as some hospitals still didn't even have their own wiki nodes. The biggest disruptions were in the third-world countries, large parts of which still had to connect to Wikipedia via the Internet. It took several days before all Wikipedia servers had been replaced. Thankfully, all vital facilities, without exception, had minor Wikipedia servers, or at least several wiki nodes, installed. As a safety precaution against the reoccurrence of similar events in the future, several million medium-capacity Wikipedia servers were built worldwide.
Many breakthroughs in Wikipedia protocol research have since been developed, allowing easier communication with Wikipedia and increasing the rate of adoption and learning of Wikipedia. Dolphins could communicate with Wikipedia hundreds of times faster than before. More importantly, Wikipedia was also adapted to the rather confusing human brain waves in addition to the much more clearly focused dolphin brain waves, which then allowed humans to communicate directly with Wikipedia.
With these stellar breakthroughs in Wikipedia protocol research, researchers set Wikipedia to analyze space for possible signals from extraterrestrial life. Surprisingly, they found signals coming from within our solar system, which turned out to be from an alien satellite. Since humanity created Wikipedia, it then had to consider humanity as an intelligent life form, qualifying humans for the basic rights of all civilizations in the universe. It was at this juncture that the human-created part of Wikipedia combined with the universal Wikipedia and, as such, became an intelligent creature imbued with all knowledge in the known universe. Soon after this, humans and dolphins were then acknowledged as valued members of the cosmic community and granted all the rights we are accustomed to today, such as the right to visit all the many civilizations and places in the universe and the right to eat unlimited amounts of chocolate ice-cream on Thursdays.
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Wow. And what is cool is that someone *really believes that* since it is not in visions where we put things we don't believe yet. Isn't that inspiring?
