Dear Stephen and friends,

thanks. I feel sorry for what you have experienced as a volunteer
Wikipedia writer/editor. I can't comment much on Wikipedia's Buddhism
article, for I am not really involved in its writings. The only tiny
contribution I have made to a Buddhist topic on Wikipedia, was to add
the link http://www.tipitaka.net in the article Tipitaka (now merged
into Tripitaka). Because of the merger, I can't checked the exact time
I made the entry, but I remember it to be sometime in 2002. ;-)

I agree with the points you raised about the problems Wikipedia is
currently facing. I have discussed about them earlier with the group.
It is unfortunate, but these are shortcomings of an open web-based
collaborative free-content encyclopedia. In fact, all forms of open
web-based collaborative project are subject to varying degree of
hooliganism and vandalism.

Evenso, I use Wikipedia very frequently, daily or every other day, and
I am sure many people do likewise. And I regard Wikipedia to be
reliable while acknowledge the potential of mistakes, deliberate and
unintentional, even though my use of Wikipedia is mainly non-Buddhist
topics. We have to bear in mind that human understanding and knowledge
is always expanding. We are always making new discoveries and updating
our knowledge. Even at the incredibly fast rate we progress in all
areas of science, nature and technology today, the quest of knowledge
is as daunting as it was when cavemen first stared blankly into the
night sky and questioned the meaning of life. Subjective topics like
politics, religion, philosophy, history, etc. pose even greater
challenges for these are no longer within the "rational realm" of
science and logic. It is all "man-made", if you know what I mean. The
main task is then to remain open-minded, support all arguments with
scientific evidence, and adopt a balanced view to present a fair
treatment of the topic.

Now, I do not think we are going to build Tipitaka Wiki to be like
Wikipedia for the reason that the subject area we cover is only a very
little subset of the range Wikipedia covers. However, for every subset
Wikipedia covers, there seems to be "mini" wiki's specialising in it.
If you look around, there are thousands of wiki's on the web now. And
Tipitaka Wiki will be one of them, and it will be a valuable one,
providing peer-review, open-content information on Pali Tipitaka, Pali
language, and related topics to web users.

Every wiki has its own unique content and characteristics, so will
Tipitaka Wiki. We are not going to copy stuff from Wikipedia, although
its content is "free to copy". We shall also avoid mimicking the
operations of this mailing list. It will be supported by this mailing
list, so in a way the group's members serve as a supervisory body,
which oversees the wiki's development, and examine and scrutinise its
contents. In this way, although anyone can post on the wiki, it will
not be as "open" as Wikipedia. The wiki should be allowed to take a
complete new life in itself. And only time could determine what it
would become.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Hodge wrote:

> no special knowledge required.

Of course, use of the various wiki projects is easy, but I wish
contributors in general would first ask themselves, "Do I have the
knowledge of and expertise in this subject to make a worthwhile
contribution or am I just indulging my ego". Sadly, the answer often
seems to be "no" to the former and "yes" to the latter. Look at the
mess the Wikipedia Buddhism article has become. I used to contribute,
but have completely washed my hands of it. Too many big-headed,
uninformed morons who have no respect for others !

Also I noticed an article recently discussing Wikipedia with the
founder. Apparently Wikipedia is at a crisis point -- too many of the
older contributors and editors have left for the same kind of reasons
as myself.

So, naturally, good luck with the Tipitaka Wiki -- but I hope history
doesn't repeat itself.