Every maxim is half right[edit source]
We could also have a Worse is worse article, since every maxim is right some of the time, while its opposite is true at other times. A project may suffer from being too perfect, or it may suffer from being not perfect enough. The necessary degree of competence will be determined by a project's niche, just as in nature an organism needs to be good enough to survive in the ecosystem it inhabits. The presence of one "superior" organism may raise the bar for all its competitors. For example, applied to Appropedia, we have the 300 kg gorilla of Wikipedia raising the bar for all other wikis. In 2001, when Wikipedia started, a new wiki could get away with being as simple and plain as Wikipedia was initially. As Wikipedia grew, it rapidly improved its presentation and internal organization, and now sets a high standard for a new wiki. This is, I suspect, part of why Making a successful new wiki is hard. People who like to edit on a well-developed wiki have Wikipedia to absorb them, and people who are happy to edit on barren wikis have thousands of barren wikis to choose from. --Teratornis 20:06, 29 March 2011 (PDT)
- This is a great point. Knowing the right level between perfectionism and lackadaisicalness is often what separates experts from people that have some idea what they are doing. We might not need a separate page for Worse is worse, but it should be at least discussed in the article. --Lonny 15:46, 6 April 2011 (PDT)
- Now that I'm an Appropedia administrator and looking into our spam problem, I'm seeing another example: wikipedia:WP:EIW#Spam. Wikipedia's size and technical depth let it build whole applications to address problems as they arise, such as spam. Quick and dirty would be great if everybody in the world had good intentions. But unfortunately not all of them do. The only solution appears to be some sort of social or technical complexity. "Worse" does not seem to be "better" when it comes to policing the bad apples. --Teratornis 21:08, 6 April 2011 (PDT)
- We do have:
- MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist and MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist via the extension - mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist.
- MediaWiki:Titleblacklist and MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist from mw:Extension:Title_Blacklist.
- I added these to Appropedia:Anti-spam and anti-vandalism measures.
- --Lonny 23:31, 6 April 2011 (PDT)
- We do have:
- Now that I'm an Appropedia administrator and looking into our spam problem, I'm seeing another example: wikipedia:WP:EIW#Spam. Wikipedia's size and technical depth let it build whole applications to address problems as they arise, such as spam. Quick and dirty would be great if everybody in the world had good intentions. But unfortunately not all of them do. The only solution appears to be some sort of social or technical complexity. "Worse" does not seem to be "better" when it comes to policing the bad apples. --Teratornis 21:08, 6 April 2011 (PDT)