On 5/28/07, Josh Gordon user.jpgordon@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/28/07, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net wrote:
And, without the community, there is no encyclopedia.
Yeah, but. To be a dancer takes intense training, years of suffering, years of sacrifice, a lifetime of committing oneself to difficult ritual, painful practicing, and putting everything one has on the line.
To be a contributer to Wikipedia takes the ability to type, hopefully the ability to read, and an Internet connection.
There's nothing remotely resembling a parallel.
--jpgordon ∇∆∇∆
From 8 1/2 years as a dance parent, I have to agree there's not much comparison between a Wikipedia editor and a dancer, and the closer an editor gets to being like a dancer, the less useful they are as an editor imo. This is why many of the obsessive editors burn out, simply they become less useful as they devote more extreme amounts of time to editing Wikipedia, and less time to learning anything useful to add to Wikipedia. IMO.
Moral is pretty important, though, to any corporate structure and to volunteer organizations. That's why corporations pay billions to send employees on moral boosting working together retreats. The most successful volunteer organizations are those who manage to let their volunteers know they are appreciated while keeping the volunteers on track with the goal--neither of these things include telling established editors that they are worthless compared to newbie vandals who might some day be conned into contributing positively (again, in spite of the fact that all who repeat this mantra can't be bothered to actually ask the newbie vandal to contribute positively).
Moral is very important--that's common sense.
KP