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OK, so they created an e-BL and stored it on a blockchain. Whoopee, I can do that with my toy Multichain setup in 30 seconds. Now what?

How many participants were on that blockchain? Was the transfer of custody of the oranges recorded via asset transfer on that blockchain each step of the way? Was the e-BL used as a contract document by legal entities who received it via the blockchain, and did a bank connected to the blockchain use it as proof of collateral, as the article implies?

Because there have been a lot of big-name exercises in practical applications of Blockchain which then turned out to be a single node using it as a simple database, like the much-ballyhooed World Food Program blockchain exercise did.

This is a classic "pump and dump" scheme. David Gerard has the background detail, and an analysis that is far better than what I can give.

Short version: hype and noise, sound and fury, all in the name of people trying to pump up a penny stock so they can cash out.

There's quite a lot terribly wrong with them. Look up VBulletin versus Xenforo too.

That's because it's a fork, because Internet Brands tried to sue the volunteers involved.

At present, Wikivoyage is running about 500 edits an hour, Wikitravel around 500 edits every 15 hours - most of those being spam and spam cleanup.

Mostly it's PR companies.

Tom Morris outlines the problem: Infographics are porn without the happy ending.

Yes, I was speaking conservatively. Even as a fanzine editor in the 1980s in Australia, I accepted USD cash.

XFree86 died when the community got up and left. Even with free hosting, the remaining XFree86 partisans couldn't keep it alive and lost interest.

Before that, the X Consortium - backed by the might of industry - died when no-one could be found to participate in it ... because XFree86 was where the action (i.e., community) was.

Citizendium forked from Wikipedia, recruited a pile of academics, then Larry Sanger drove them away. (And then the cranks moved in.) When someone said "chaps, CZ is dead" and tried another fork, they called him ... a "traitor". This from the project that was a fork itself.

XOrg is under the MIT X11 licence, but seems to get plenty of contributions back - because it's where the community is. An open source licence with centripetal force from the gravitational pull of the community.

Wayland's lead developers and all the people pushing for it in Fedora are X.Org developers. They're not "traitors" to X, they're people with their eye on the target: a good open source desktop.

EGCS won by the community getting up and leaving GCC.

LibreOffice won when the community got up and left Oracle. Oracle and IBM's approach in trying to claw it back is gibberingly, hilariously misconceived. (And Rob Weir blew his cred irretrievably lying about what the FSF had said and directing abuse at the FSF rep who tried to correct his lie. Once a shill equals a shill.)

OOo=XFree86 with a sponsor. Yay sponsors. Can IBM employ enough contributors to single-handedly make up for the enthusiasm to be found at LibreOffice? I really doubt it.

Already done. Books LLC and Alphascript do these print-on-demand "books" taken from Wikipedia, charging $50 a copy. Reusing WIkipedia content is fine - that's what it's there for, make a zillion bucks, knock yourself out - but they need to make it a little clearer where this stuff comes from.

Why don't they just edit it with "spoiler alert"

Originally it had this classification but it was edited out by David Gerard. And I believe has not been added back since. If you don't know who David Gerard is, he has been very active in Wikipedia since early 2004 and blogs frequently about it.

The referred "minor" edit was justified as: "Removing redundant per Wikipedia:Spoiler - using AWB". It was originally placed under the "Ending" section of the article and I must say I fully agree with its characterization as redundant.

Why don't they just edit it with "spoiler alert"

Originally it had this classification but it was edited out by David Gerard. And I believe has not been added back since. If you don't know who David Gerard is, he has been very active in Wikipedia since early 2004 and blogs frequently about it.

This is on the press coverage bingo card.

I'll be calling them [npg.org.uk] first thing Monday (in my capacity as "just a blogger on Wikimedia-related topics") to establish just what they think they're doing here. Other bloggers and, if interested, journalists may wish to do the same, to establish what their consistent response is.

Don't you feel a more honest approach would be to call them in your capacity as Press Officer for Wikimedia UK and a Volunteer Media Contact for the Wikimedia Foundation.?

It seems you have a lot to say on this particular subject without making clear your motives?

Encyclopedia Dramatica and reality. It's amazing how much you people hate Wikipedia.

User interests beat developer interests, assuming that the first doesn't utterly cripple the second. And it does have to utterly cripple them to cause a problem.

* Every Wikipedia story, Slashdot commenters bitch about their experiences of participation. However, the site's still #7 in the world, so what's it doing right? Focusing on the reader.

* GPL (a user-rights license) vs BSD. Compare the popularity of Linux versus FreeBSD.

* iPhone vs Android. The best mobile phone interface ever. In this case, Apple is going further than anyone before in trying to utterly cripple developer interest - but if you can work an SDK then that many users is going to be attractive.

Openness will get Android a fabulous ticky-box feature list ... but, y'know, Windows Mobile has a fabulous ticky-box feature list, and no-one picks that instead of an iPhone if they have a choice.

http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2008/08/27/forget-the-writers/

There's hardly a "Wikipedia replacement" that hasn't started from trying to make a welcoming environment for authors. Wikipedia, however, is popular because it's what readers want. Writers are important, but way less so than the readers.

If readers wanted ten articles on one topic, they'd just click the first ten Google hits. It's like meta-search engines in the 1990s that gave you results from ten bad pre-Google search engines in the hope you might find a damn thing, when the real answer was one search engine that didn't suck.

Many people bitch and moan about Wikipedia, usually those who couldn't work well enough with others. But it's a top 10 site not because it lifted a finger to be, but because it actually works well enough to produce a good-enough first port of call.

Google doesn't owe you a living. Deal.

We get these whiny search engine optimisation spammers on Wikipedia all the time. They don't go away.