I think I get the doghouse for forgetting AO3 when I wrote that. Or whatever the intarweebs version is. No cookie?
AO3, I'm guessing, qualifies because of its archival aspects, and holding the content itself is part of that. I suppose linking the rest of the 'net could be considered part of that mission (not really up to me to determine, after all). I think -- coming at these kinds of things from a very IT-based perspective, as pertains to applications (and incidentally, to NFPs) -- is that you find something you do, and you do that thing really well. If something is outside the mission, not directly part of mission or the basic scope, you don't go there. That way lies madness, or at least eventual disaster, especially for smaller organizations/companies. Not saying someone can't attempt to be all things to all people, but even Google -- which does -- at least breaks its different be-all-things into different parts, and tackles each at different speeds. Google mail, google maps, google plus, and so on: you could consider each of these independent subsidiaries that might tie in together, but they're not co-reliant. That is, if google mail collapses tomorrow, it won't affect the reliability of google maps (as a distinct application, not talking about the intra-monetary company aspects).
Which means for me, at least, scope is a major issue and one to be curtailed, hard. Pick one thing to do, and do it well, to survive. Scope creep kills.
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Date: 9 Oct 2011 09:44 pm (UTC)AO3, I'm guessing, qualifies because of its archival aspects, and holding the content itself is part of that. I suppose linking the rest of the 'net could be considered part of that mission (not really up to me to determine, after all). I think -- coming at these kinds of things from a very IT-based perspective, as pertains to applications (and incidentally, to NFPs) -- is that you find something you do, and you do that thing really well. If something is outside the mission, not directly part of mission or the basic scope, you don't go there. That way lies madness, or at least eventual disaster, especially for smaller organizations/companies. Not saying someone can't attempt to be all things to all people, but even Google -- which does -- at least breaks its different be-all-things into different parts, and tackles each at different speeds. Google mail, google maps, google plus, and so on: you could consider each of these independent subsidiaries that might tie in together, but they're not co-reliant. That is, if google mail collapses tomorrow, it won't affect the reliability of google maps (as a distinct application, not talking about the intra-monetary company aspects).
Which means for me, at least, scope is a major issue and one to be curtailed, hard. Pick one thing to do, and do it well, to survive. Scope creep kills.