Cliff-hangers involve excitement and the desire to tune in next week. I think it would be more accurate to call this a half-ad rather than a cliff-hanger.
I think my biggest frustration reading this memoir is that the author appears to be saying, "Hey, Jimmy doesn't deserve all the credit, I worked on it too!" -- but then he goes on to say, "Of course, I only worked on it for 3 years, Jimmy actually came up with the idea and funded most of it through Boomis, and after Nupedia failed and I was laid off, Jimmy grew Wikipedia like a motherfucker."
That frustrates me because I actually prefer the Nupedia style of vetting articles for publication, but the author just bungled it. Or I partially like the Nupedia style -- I mean, I like the Wiki notion that anyone can write anything, but I don't like that it isn't moderated or peer reviewed before being published. So a little code to get a signoff before publication would have been a nice addition.
In any case, I think a memoir about a 3 year stint at a dot-com startup isn't very exciting anymore -- even if the startup is Wikipedia. Especially since it appears that Wikipedia is doing better now that he's gone. In fact, I kind of wonder if his layoff wasn't a "thank you" for squandering the first 18 months of investment money on a old-fashioned system that netted 24 articles. Now that would make for a good article: talk to the people controlling the purse-strings, let's hear what their back-room conversations were like.
Cliff-hanger? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cliff-hanger? (Score:2)
I think my biggest frustration reading this memoir is that the author appears to be saying, "Hey, Jimmy doesn't deserve all the credit, I worked on it too!" -- but then he goes on to say, "Of course, I only worked on it for 3 years, Jimmy actually came up with the idea and funded most of it through Boomis, and after Nupedia failed and I was laid off, Jimmy grew Wikipedia like a motherfucker."
That frustrates me because I actually prefer the Nupedia style of vetting articles for publication, but the author just bungled it. Or I partially like the Nupedia style -- I mean, I like the Wiki notion that anyone can write anything, but I don't like that it isn't moderated or peer reviewed before being published. So a little code to get a signoff before publication would have been a nice addition.
In any case, I think a memoir about a 3 year stint at a dot-com startup isn't very exciting anymore -- even if the startup is Wikipedia. Especially since it appears that Wikipedia is doing better now that he's gone. In fact, I kind of wonder if his layoff wasn't a "thank you" for squandering the first 18 months of investment money on a old-fashioned system that netted 24 articles. Now that would make for a good article: talk to the people controlling the purse-strings, let's hear what their back-room conversations were like.