On 13/05/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
on 5/13/07 1:13 PM, David Gerard at 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.)
Do you believe the problems outlined in this and other posts exist in WP? Whether WP is a person's first or fiftieth online community to be involved in, if you do believe the problems exist, how do your comments work toward resolving them?
I think it works better in understanding whether they're something truly unique or manifestations of something that's come before. If the former, it may be problem people (remove a McCarthyish list of wikicommunists or whatever). If the latter, it may be emergent behaviour requiring deeper work to solve or work around.
That is, solving the problems is helped by better ascertaining their nature.
- d.