On 9/7/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote: [snipped]
So, as I see it, the article pages have one set of criteria (neutral point of view and so on), and all the rest of the pages have another set of criteria (inclusive, expansive, provocative discussions of all alternatives). These differences shouldn't create conflict; they should function in concert. On many of the MediaWiki installations I setup for the US Government (internal, employee use only at the moment), we leave the article pages locked for to admins to publish official information, but, the discussion/talk and user pages are a come-one-come-all free-for-all. The two not only must co-exist, but cannot exist without each other. That's what a wiki is, what a wiki has come to be. Otherwise, it's merely an official blog, and the only readers would be the original writers themselves. If everyone can write, suddenly everyone is invited to read, too, and participation expands exponentially. Start clamping down on the ability to contribute, and readership dies. What was the goal, again? Grow or die. Stability = death.
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[snipped]
"... We're an encyclopaedia-writing project ..." ... that can ONLY move forward democratically. Otherwise, it's a Britannica project, in the hands of the owners, not the participants. As soon as it becomes a game of rules being inflicted on one set of attempted participants by another set of participants, then the democracy falls away, and, as noted here, the encyclopedia falls away, and we stop to have endless meta-discussions. Why? Because we're trying to rebuild the democracy FIRST. Then we can get back to the encyclopedia. One follows the other, depends upon it, and cannot exist without it. Kill the democracy, kill the encyclopedia.
[snipped]
-- Peter Blaise
The end result is that this fails to regard Wikipedia as what she is - an encyclopaedia. Not a community. There *is* a community built *around* Wikipedia, but the community is *not* Wikipedia. The purpose of that community is to build an encyclopaedia, named "Wikipedia", and that community is supposed to develop to serve that goal. That means its not democratic - fine, being a democratic community is not our goal. That means we sometimes ban people because they do not, will not or can not contribute positively to the encyclopaedia - again, that's also fine. Anyone is free to fork Wikipedia and recast it the same but without moderation, page locking, banning or whatever else there pet peeve is.
In the end, the picture being painted here does not represent what Wikipedia's community is (and make no mistake - she should own us, not vice versa). Wikipedia's community is a co-dominate oligarchy with high class mobility, because this is what best serves our encyclopaedia. By and large, people are banned because they want to use Wikipedia, not allow her to use them. Anyone can go through the block log and review any ban they like. Bans are not the decision of one person - they are the decision of 1200 people.
In the end, it's unfortunate that we sometimes have to ban people, but we do. This is the only way we can ever hope to build an encyclopaedia. It would be nice if everyone came to help build an encyclopaedia. But they don't.
WilyD