1) these people are not young and getting older every day, so priorities might change too

2) after a while if person A takes this on, there will be a request to powerwash the gratuitous A’s edits and insertions off of it

3) if the purpose is to have it in pristine state and do no edits, it’s not like old versions have disappeared, just mirror them away

So in order for the document to evolve, we need a system to determine consensus. Everyone who cares runs a program on their computer that joins the network and registers their intent. With each proposed change, a query goes out to the network, and it's up to everyone on the network to say yea or nay to the proposal. With enough "yea"s, the document is updated.

...this is starting to sound like a blockchain, isn't it.

Not enough people born after 1980 have read either version of the dictionary, which is a shame in having a unified vocabulary across more of the internet. A companion volume with new terms, events, and foci would help.

I am glad Monty Python, at least, remains popular across old hackers and new.

Without having a real opinion on Esr’s eedits, a snapshot of earlyish hacker culture (whether or not conflating LISP and UNIX) is historically interesting. With tech today so mainstream and with so many subcultures and branches one could of course a glossary but it wouldn’t be the same.

even when it is written down, things don't stick across the internet. we're still having gif vs jif pronunciation debates

Well concerning GIF it’s obviously soft G because it stands for Giraffics Interchange Format. Does it not?

It's a soft G, like the peanut butter brand, because that's what the inventor says.

His algo, his rules.

Better solution: Just make your own for whatever project you're working with. AIWORD was originally a product of Stanford's AI community. Let it rest and make a dictionary that reflects the usage of your own group.

..........and mercilessly mock Eric Raymond for his pretensions. :D