Skyring wrote:
On 6/4/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote:
Skyring wrote:
Why not look at the Internet communities that DO
work?
How can we when you haven't mentioned what they are?
Are you saying that you only know of non-functional Internet communities?
No, I just think that different people have different opinions on what
constitutes a community that "works". In my mind, Wikipedia works, but
clearly you disagree. So when you tell us to look at something that
fulfills _your_ criteria, you should tell us what it is, or we will be
left to guess what _your_ criteria are.
But anyway -- I've noticed elsewhere in the thread that you were
probably talking about LiveJournal and BookCrossing. I don't know the
latter. As for LiveJournal, you mentioned that it "includes the sort of
members who are well-educated, well-spoken, intelligent and fun to be
with" -- I might have agreed to that about two or three years ago, but
in my experience LiveJournal is increasingly taken over by the
illiterate. It is also a long shot to claim that it "works" -- it is the
target of avalanches of spam and trolling, and the management barely
comes up with features to even come anywhere near combatting it. When a
LiveJournal community still has active maintainers, they can keep the
noise somewhat down by deleting and banning, but it is a lot of work and
not very rewarding (you get a lot of complaints that you have deleted
legitimate stuff). In practice, most communities, not to mention all
syndicated feeds, do not have (active) maintainers.
I'm not sure why I've written all this, as it doesn't really have
anything to do with Wikipedia. LiveJournal is not a creative or
collaborative work, so the aspects that make it "work" are entirely
irrelevant for Wikipedia.
Timwi