Reply #44: do you remember the good early days of the internet?

[NuttyFluffers]

i do. there was an ocean of intelligent people, even in the very earliest days of AOL. it was like a brand new universe open filled with thoughts, ideas, hopes, it was wonderful. something this beautiful had to be shared!

then it was shared (which is good) but then a funny thing happened. people couldn't keep a good thing going. they decided to do stupid things endlessly until people had to create defenses. people then had to ditch certain areas (ditching AOL and its chat rooms is a good place to start) and be more selective of trusting. whole legions of researchers had to discount websites as resources because links often were invalid after 3-5 years (y'know, just like you and i end up switching e-mail addresses about as often when ISP providers get bought out). people had to become savvy quick. not everyone was able to keep up. several people, after being repeatedly burned were turned off. others, who were more savvy, could still find information, but often found it could be just as laborious as checking the stacks in a library... thus the information age matured.

well, wiki is still young, it will soon go through the obnoxious pre-teen phase... it will have to develop defenses and limit priviledges like everything before it, and then it'll be mature. in the meanwhile i'm not going to bother waiting for it to be a resource to bother with when there's already plenty of 'mature' sources already out there.

the sad pattern of humanity. but through strife, growth. ... and kool-aid man's tummy.