Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia's hierarchy of needs

Interesting
I quite like this. It reminds me of various things said elsewhere, but not all in one place like this. It does make sense to not blindly put any one thing before everything else, but to examine the effect on the other areas if any one of these is ignored, and from that to work out the priorities. Carcharoth (talk) 23:20, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that was indeed my intention. I only hope it's both coherent and correct at the same time, since it's 100% original research. :) --Gutza T T+ 02:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Somewhat confused by the hierarchy
I find it confusing that this hierarchy of priorities seems to consider "media attention" to be the first (i.e., essential) level, and "principles" the ultimate level. Over on the left is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is a pretty typical graphic representation of a hierarchy. With most hierarchies, the basic or most important level is the one at the bottom, as it is the foundation upon which the remainder of the levels are built. Without commenting on the content too much, could you please clarify which of the priorities you consider to be the most important? Thanks. Risker (talk) 03:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppose the question is for me. If you find excretion more important than morality (per Maslow corroborated with your assessment) then I don't think I want to explain. --Gutza T T+ 04:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not being sarcastic; Maslow's foundation level is for life-sustaining needs like nourishment and shelter, without which no organism can survive. In the case of the Priorities hierarchy, it struck me that principles should be the foundation, rather than media attention. The project can happily exist without the latter (and did, for some years), but would be unlikely to attract contributors without foundation principles. My comment was not in any way intended to offend you. Risker (talk) 05:14, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, I shouldn't have been so defensive, sorry about that. Anyway, to the point: Maslow is about survival; this is about success (compare Wikipedia success to Wikipedia survival). --Gutza T T+ 05:20, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...
I can't quite accept the statement that contributors are more important to Wikipedia than readers. Giggy (talk) 12:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Without contributors generating content there's nothing for the readers to read, so I guess they are actually more important. Think about it this way: if all contributors left Wikipedia tomorrow, how long would it take before it would lose its readership? It works the other way around as well -- at first nobody was reading Wikipedia, but as contributor numbers started to grow so did the number of readers. --Gutza T T+ 17:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a project to create an encyclopedia. The product is the most important thing, not the process by which it is created. When it comes to a question of whether something should be worded for the convenience of the author, or for the convenience of the reader, the answer is obvious, it should be for the reader. Looking at these principles, I'm not getting that. So I'm not sure these principles are right yet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lar (talk • contribs) 01:52, 10 October 2008
 * I tried to address all criticisms in the talk page with my recent edit, please review. --Gutza T T+ 22:20, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Status of this document
This asserts, rather assertively, that it's information about Wikipedia. But I don't think it should be tagged that way just yet. It needs something showing that it's under construction, not widely accepted as correct, etc... ++Lar: t/c 22:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Changed it to essay ++Lar: t/c 02:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)