A big thanks to PJ [LWN.net]

A big thanks to PJ

Posted Apr 13, 2011 22:53 UTC (Wed) by vblum (guest, #1151)
In reply to: A big thanks to PJ by kmself
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

yes indeed. (subject)

"On a tech/community note, I find it interesting that the blog approach worked somewhat better than the wiki method, at least in the early 2000s."

I am not sure how much grueling detailed work was done on the Wiki (perhaps a lot), ... but what GL really proved, if nothing else, is that hard work matters. GL succeeded because PJ was willing - and able - to put an amazing amount of work into tracking down the details.

She also has an interesting habit of judging uncomfortable issues largely correctly, if harshly - at least those issues that could later be verified, well beyond SCO. One more thing that matters, and perhaps much more easily done on a blog than a wiki.

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A big thanks to PJ

Posted Apr 15, 2011 6:10 UTC (Fri) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]

I think early on we were all just treating this as something of interest that we felt needed to be addressed, clarified, and fact-checked.

For the Wiki, my own goals were more to create a record of the issue (one of the better pages was a timeline of events). Wikipedia does this well today, particularly with large, long news events (look to the Boxing day and recent earthquake/tsunami): stories with many facets, in which facts emerge over time, etc. I find the Wiki treatment far superior to mainstream news outlets.

Blogs are more transactional, and I suspect more immediately rewarding of participation. Wikipedia itself took a number of years to really gather mass, but once it did it was unstoppable.

My sense was that there were far more people contributing to Groklaw. I believe we had a few score users, of whom a dozen or so were highly active. Among the amusing developments was when an account appeared under the name of Rob Enderle. I followed up on that as I was concerned someone might be spoofing him, but from all appearances it was legit.

No sour grapes either way, just one of my own observations. I'm interested in what tech works and what doesn't, as well as under what circumstances.