[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Marc Riddell<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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?

What? This is Wikipedia. The passengers *are* driving!

Carcharoth