Wikepedia

[Alina Israeli]

"Open source" principle does not mean that YOUR last word stands: anyone
else can come and correct what you wrote, that's the foundation of the
principle, and you have to accept it. You should not see a BIG Brother  or
a conspiracy behind it.

The same principle is used in computing, for example, and there it is not
just a question of interpretation of facts (who was good, Russians or
Germans, and we could always expect that in a conflict there are two points
of view), but whether the code works or not. Someone full of himself (in
this gender) could mess it up and the program would stop working. Yet, the
proponenents think it's worth the risk (and correcting his mistakes),
because they put many heads together to solve something, or create
something that one person cannot possibly do alone.


Read about the process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source


>Robert, I do not really find this entry SO MUCH objectionable, I just
>encountered it once and tried to edit it a little. I attempted to underscore
>some dissimilarities between the Soviet and the Nazi policies that this
>entry (at least in its version a month ago) made to look very similar. For
>example, the treatment of civilians on the occupied territories or overall
>political objectives of the two leaderships before 1941. But, anyway, the
>fact that my changes were abolished several hours later made me realize that
>Wikipedia is not "shared" or "common" knowledge; it is the knowledge of
>someone anonymous who either has power (Big Brother version) or just
>happened to be the last one to click the "Enter" key.

__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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