This is a great collection of comments! because it exposes a deep bias in the readers, who are mainly coders and dev-culture.
Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconceptions.
There are several important layers to this onion.. lets call one "participation by non-specialists" .. a second "human factors, aesthetics and publishing arts" .. another is "imperfect intermediate products enable evolution" .. yet another is "taking rules before content" ..
Each topic might be an essay in itself.. Generally, I am happy to see XML essentially proposed as the answer to all human information challenges, because it takes less time to blink than to refute it, for me.
> Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconceptions.
It's on a computer. It is a database. Are you also upset at people who smash the subtle beauty of music into unfeeling bits?
a strong theme in the comments here is that features and amenities are harder to build upon than .. something .. on WMF web pages because WMF internal content is not rigorously defined and enforced.. print is not the point at all, and would take considerations in yet another direction
Guess what ? perfectly machine-readable data is called a DATABASE, and it works well in its scope.. and if you think that all of human knowledge, history, arts and culture are perfectly represented in a DATABASE, then congratulations, you are already more computer than human in your preconceptions.
There are several important layers to this onion.. lets call one "participation by non-specialists" .. a second "human factors, aesthetics and publishing arts" .. another is "imperfect intermediate products enable evolution" .. yet another is "taking rules before content" ..
Each topic might be an essay in itself.. Generally, I am happy to see XML essentially proposed as the answer to all human information challenges, because it takes less time to blink than to refute it, for me.