[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[Charles Matthews]

Marc Riddell wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Marc Riddell<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>     
>>> To be fully productive, to reach its greatest
>>> potential and to achieve its stated goals a workplace's culture cannot vary.
>>> To work, to create, at their full potential, a person must be able to focus
>>> on that: the work. They cannot be constantly looking over their shoulder, or
>>> live with the anxiety that an unstable, unpredictable workplace can produce.
>>>       
> on 8/12/09 1:09 PM, Carcharoth at carcharothwp at googlemail.com wrote:
>
>   
>> I think it is a balance. Have too uniform a culture and the variety of
>> our output will suffer, both in terms of those willing to edit here
>> (imagine the people who edit Wikipedia trying to get along in a normal
>> workplace) and the diversity of the articles. There is also an
>> argument that a homogenous workplace would work against 'neutral point
>> of view'.
>>
>>     
> Once again, Carcharoth, I am not speaking about points of view regarding
> specific subjects. We can disagree to hell and gone about something and
> still maintain a mutual courtesy and respect for each other as human beings.
>
>   
Not sure whether to cite Dilbert or the Beach Boys here. To stop people 
"constantly looking over their shoulder" it would certainly help to 
place them in a 360-degree cubicle. To wish oneself  the best of all 
cultural worlds sounds a bit like dreaming that "they all could be 
California girls". In any case the monoculture as an ideal does no 
favours to Wikipedia, whatever the pedigree of [[Taylorism]] and 
[[Fordism]] in the for-profit sector; dull but efficient is not really 
the way to go, either. "For well you know that it's a fool who plays it 
cool/By making his world a little colder." Think the Beatles win this one.

Charles