on 1/30/07 9:11 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert(a)gmail.com wrote:
You always have the right to stop reading a Wikipedia
talk page, email, or
such.
The problem is that those forums constitute the only mechanisms by
which nearly all decision-making happens in Wikipedia. You can't go
"I'm going to go over to that room there, with these other people, and
stop listening to the guy shouting into the megaphone". There's only
one "room" per topic (or, a small set, of meta-topic rooms plus the
right one). If someone's abusing others, their only options short of
some form of community imposed censorship are to stop participating.
Every forum I have seen people try to build online, without exception,
has failed and fallen apart if there wasn't a mechanism by which
abusive contributors could be exiled. There have also been a fair
number of places where tin-pot dictators stifle discussion - there's
no doubt that there's a continuum from undercontrol to overcontrol.
Wikipedia is operating comfortably in the middle ground, which is in
my experience and opinion the only place that an online community can
survive.
There have been various academic studies on the topic of interpersonal
communications and community standards online; I don't have convenient
citations, but it's out there. They have observed the same thing.
George,
I bow (ever so slightly ;-) ) to your experience with the online forum. I
have, and still am, learning a lot about it from all of the responses I've
gotten here - that's why I brought it up in the first place.
I'm going to check out some of the studies you referred to. But, as in the
session room, I usually learn more of what I need to know from the person(s)
who are experiencing it everyday.
Marc
--
A work of art is the artist's way of sorting out the chaos.