Surely we're all busy reinventing the wheel here?  Why not just
add mechanical music stuff to Wikipedia, http://wikipedia.org/ ?
It's much more likely to be read there, and will probably endure
longer than in private spin-offs.

As for access control, not having any is its primary strength, so
Wikipedia say.  It ensures that there is no control of the direction
the information takes, so that the wiki is solely an agglomeration
of individual voices.  This argument is a strong one: it recently
persuaded the Chinese government to unblock Wikipedia, accepting
that it had no underlying nefarious purpose.

Disputes will clearly start with tit-for-tat editing, but because
neither side can suppress the other's view the only way forward is to
have a reasoned addressing of the issue representing both viewpoints,
the reason for their existence, and the relative strengths of both.

You can see the result of this frequently in Wikipedia, the tone of
its entries being markedly moderate and careful.  The discussion and
history pages give a good idea of what's going on behind the scenes.
Having confidence in the idea and the will to let things run their
course has made Wikipedia one of the most impressive things yet seen
on the Internet, and when mockers tested its accuracy they found it
equalled that of [Encyclopaedia] Britannica.

On the other hand, controlling access simply ensures that excluded
parties feel their views are being suppressed and hence devalues the
process.  After all, who can tell if the blocked voice is not after all
the right one?  Reference the skewed and biased lines that some hobby
societies have taken under control of some special-interest cabal or
other.

Access controls reveal only that those imposing them lack confidence
in the process or its contributors, or fear its result.

It's not as if the mechanical music world has wider and more virulent
disputes than anybody else -- far from it!  Indeed, it's well along
the moderate scale compared with some other topics!  That's not to
say it's perfect, of course, but most MMDigest debates seem to
resolve into the balancing of viewpoints.

The difficulty with the MMDigest format is that there's no formal
record of that balanced view, the MMD Archive presenting the steps
along the path rather than the final destination, meaning that
searchers can enter at any point in a debate and not necessarily
pick up its history or conclusion.

Wikipedia has a team of editors who are tasked to keep an eye on what
goes on, help maintain presentational policies, prevent deliberate
vandalism, and so on.  Perhaps what MMDers ought to be considering is
volunteering their efforts in this area to ensure that the mechanical
music wiki evolves in a useful manner.  At the moment Wikipedia has no
structure or special category for mechanical music, so there is plenty
of scope for growth.

Julian Dyer