Charter/Sources/Best cases
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.
Contents
Short term
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.
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.
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?
Long term
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
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are treated with as much respect as funded published academics, and help work out a rigorous protocol for dealing with unpublished or unpublishable literature, work that challenges the validity of science itself, or calls for ends to professions.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.
Extended future
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...
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, and it was often hard to find useful information.
When Wikipedia was created, it was actually just a small part of the Internet. It was intended to be an encyclopædia, where anyone could edit any information at any time. Although it is hard to imagine the point of information that people can't even edit, it was actually a relatively new idea at the time. At the time, it was very limited. The information was divided into articles, each article with a different name. Links between articles had to be added manually, and articles could only contain text and pictures. It was possible to accidentally add inconsistant or redundant information.
Despite the limitations, Wikipedia was by far the most effective system available, and therefore quickly became very popular. However, free nature of the Wikipedia met opposition from many large companies, which relied on patents and copyrights for profit. A computer company called Microsoft openly criticized Wikipedia, and announced that they would not support Wikipedia. Soon after, they did release a browser called Wikipedia Explorer, but it was already too late to stop them from going out of buisness, most people had already swiched to Wikipedia-friendly operating systems such as Linux, and using popular browsers such as Wikera and Wikiscape. Later, several other companies compiled a list of copyright violations, and attempted to get a court order to shut down Wikipedia. However, on the day of the trial in the US, wikipedians actually did shut down all US-based Wikipedia servers, and blocked all traffic between the US, and foreign Wikipedia servers. With all US-based Wikipedia shut down, the court had no way to access the case files, and the case was dropped. US-based Wikipedia was restored the same day. To avoid similar embarrasment, all pending European court cases against Wikipedia were also dropped.
Ironically, what is considered to be the largest single terrorist attack ever occurred on Wikipedia day, the same year Wikipedia was celebrating having replaced 90% of the Internet. Although noone was directly hurt by the action, all 375 major Wikipedia servers worldwide were simultaneously destroyed by time delayed explosives. The 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. Only about 700 major wikivision channels were still broadcasting. This tragic event is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of deaths, with public transport crashing, and doctors being disconnected in the middle of 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 was several days before all Wikipedia servers had been replaced. All vital facilities, without exception, had minor wikipedia servers, or at least several wiki nodes, installed. As a safety precaution against similar events, several million medium wikipedi servers were built worldwide.
Breakthoughs in Wikipedia protocol research were developed, allowing easier communication with Wikipedia, and increasing the rate of adaption and learning of Wikipedia. Dolphins could communicate with Wikipedia hundreds of times faster than before, and Wikipedia could now also adapt to the rather confused human brain waves as well as the clear focused dolphin brain waves, allowing humans to communicate directly with Wikipedia.
With the breakthroughs in Wikipedia protocol research, researchers set Wikipedia to analyse space for possible signals from extraterrestrial life. Surprisingly, they found signals coming from within the star system, which turned out to be from an alien satellite. Wikipedia is informed that with the creation of itself by humanity, humanity is now to be considered an intelligent life form, and now qualifies for the basic rights of all civilizations in the universe, and the human-created part of Wikipedia combines with universal Wikipedia. Humans and dolphins become a valued member of the universe, and are granted all the rights we are acustomed to now, such as the right to visit all civilizations and all places in the universe.
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?
See also
References
Adapted from the Meta-Wikipedia article, "best cases" http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/best_cases , used under the GNU Free Documentation License.
