From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 3/1/06, Peter Mackay
<peter.mackay(a)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)