[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[William Pietri]

Stan Shebs wrote:
> Philip Sandifer wrote:
>   
>> McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the  
>> book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that  
>> he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. [...]
>>   
>>     
> It's amazing how quickly people have gone from "it can't possibly work" 
> to grumbling about how we haven't solved every problem with it.
>   

In one of Gerry Weinberg's books on consulting, he claims this is human 
nature.

Suppose you come in and solve somebody's biggest problem. If you are 
very lucky, there will be a 30 second period where they are excited and 
thankful. Then they realize that their next-biggest problem is now their 
biggest problem. And people will be shocked that what is now their 
biggest problem has been ignored for so long.

I've taken three good things from this:

   1. I can and should be calm toward somebody coming to me with their
      biggest problem, because they will always have one. Not that I
      shouldn't take it seriously, but I don't let them get me wound up.
   2. I shouldn't burn myself out on this one, because there will always
      be a next one.
   3. I no longer worry about running out of things to do.


William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri