From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 3/1/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
Would we produce a great encyclopaedia if we all thought and worked the same way? I'm thinking that a certain degree of
tension, conflict
and competition helps us go beyond the banal. Some of the best features of Wikipedia are produced as a way of handling
conflict. 3RR,
for instance. It's silly, but it works.
We would definitely have more POV problems. Imagine a group of like-minded anti-abortionists sitting down to work, uninterrupted, on [[Abortion]]. You wouldn't have a single revert, edit war, personal attack, RfC or arbitration. But would the article end up with 73 references, and at least a passing resemblence of NPOV?
On the other hand, at a certain level, excessive conflict clearly does interfere with getting the job done. Just like how a workplace with no coffee breaks loses morale, a workplace with more coffee break time than work time is clearly even more inefficient.
Are we far from the happy medium?
I'm not comfortable with the idea that we should promote even a small degree of conflict as a means to a better encyclopaedia. But we are in the happy position that conflict emerges naturally so it doesn't have to be promoted and mandated to a specific level. I think it is important that we recognise that we are never going to have a Wikipedia without conflict, and so we should find mechanisms to handle it without detracting from the overall quality of the thing.
Clearly if conflict escalates to the point where good articles and information are being blanked out because someone wants to score a point against an enemy, then the encyclopaedia is being harmed. Likewise, if good articles are left unwritten because the potential writers are too busy disputing amongst themselves, then we are falling short of optimum.
The userbox affair is a case in point. A lot of time and effort expended over what is essentially trivia.
I agree that conflict is inevitable, but I think that when it turns into incivility and personal abuse, then we have gone too far, and someone should step in and kick out the miscreant for a cooling off period.
Peter (Skyring)