On 13/05/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/05/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Amazingly, on Wikipedia they aren't. Various areas are not only one or
the
other, but seem to switch between the two depending on whether a group
of
people or an individual have the upper hand there, or a lot of people
are
trying to get the upper hand on the others.
A question: is Wikipedia the first online community you've been deeply involved in?
(Not that this is a bad thing on your part, I'm just asking. I suspect that this being the case for a lot of people is a lot of the perception of the problem. I just find myself repeatedly surprised at people talking about Wikipedia's problems as if they're novel in any way.)
- d.
I say "amazing" because these problems should have been headed off far earlier on in this project, because it is a serious endeavour.
Wikipedia is not a discussion forum, MMORPG, fan club or indeed primarily a community at all. It should not be run the same way as those, allowing the same problems. More particularly, it should be "run", not expected to magically "work". I think the latter is a rather flawed ideology, although unfortunately it seems many on Wikipedia subscribe to it (e.g. "the more people involved with an article the better it gets", "we keep getting more people therefore the articles will get better"). We don't even have consistent editorial standards as a result of this organisational strategy, which seems to be some bizarre belief in a magical "evolution" of management. I think the "Wikipedia:" pages put the lie to this working.
Essentially, the "wiki" technology is fantastic for collaborative editing, but I think people have got carried away with it and erroneously belief that the evolution of content through such collaboration is a paradigm that can be extended to the management of the project.
Zoney