[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[Marc Riddell]

on 8/11/09 7:15 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:

> 
> I think there is a significant structural risk in the community
> steadily getting less welcome to new blood.
> 
> A. People burn out, we need new recruits on an average roughly 18
> month cycle just to maintain a participation level.
> B. The more insular and inwards looking we become the less likely we
> are to see structural problems, both internal and external.
> C. We are (still) missing diversity of coverage due to a focus of our
> userbase in certain demographics.  I found a few days ago that one of
> the most commonly found light mechanical / structural construction
> materials used in modern first world construction had no article
> (strut channel / unistrut).  I keep tripping over this sort of stuff
> every time I turn around.  3 million articles minus epsilon is not
> done by any means.
> D. And a narrow standard worldview in some respects is not good for
> community consensus building, if we want the encyclopedia to be
> representative of the world around us that we're writing about.
> 
> The "Well, it's getting worse, but it's always been getting worse"
> misses the point - we're useful and relevant because we meet certain
> criteria for our user base.  This sort of stuff strikes out at our
> usefulness and relevance to our userbase, not just internal problems.
> If people see us as an insular, crazy bunch of encyclopedia nuts
> rather than as a genuine open movement that's important to them and
> society writ large, we lose everything.
> 

Well said, George! The problem is that the executive suite will sit up there
and watch us ruminate and commiserate and, as they see it, "get it out of
our systems" as they have many times in the past when this subject has been
brought up, then return their attentions to what they think is important.
The bottom line here is: what can we passengers do about it when we aren't
the ones driving?

Marc