Checking the Village Pump today I discovered http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#autoconf...
This is an ingenious new way of getting rid of newcomers while officially welcoming them to contribute. A newcomer who wants to create a new article would be sent through a 7+ page procedure with no less than 21 buttons, a number of dead ends and trap doors and about 2500 words of instructions for a typical path from start to end.
Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy" for deletion?
This email describes my impression. See for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WIZ2
Apoc 2400 wrote:
Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy" for deletion?
"Bureaucracy" is a fairly helpful description of how Wikipedia actually functions, as far as management style is concerned. Decisions are taken according to practice that has been codified to some extent (in some areas, to a large extent). If you want to get something done, knowing where to go and how to apply is at least half the battle. But my reading of WP:BURO would make the comment "A procedural error made in posting anything, such as a proposal or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post" central to its intention. I say we don't delete that.
Charles
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Apoc 2400 wrote:
Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not
a
bureaucracy" for deletion?
"Bureaucracy" is a fairly helpful description of how Wikipedia actually functions, as far as management style is concerned. Decisions are taken according to practice that has been codified to some extent (in some areas, to a large extent). If you want to get something done, knowing where to go and how to apply is at least half the battle. But my reading of WP:BURO would make the comment "A procedural error made in posting anything, such as a proposal or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post" central to its intention. I say we don't delete that.
Charles
Wikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word.
That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia.
- causa sui
Ryan Delaney wrote:
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com mailto:charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Apoc 2400 wrote: > Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not a > bureaucracy" for deletion? > "Bureaucracy" is a fairly helpful description of how Wikipedia actually functions, as far as management style is concerned. Decisions are taken according to practice that has been codified to some extent (in some areas, to a large extent). If you want to get something done, knowing where to go and how to apply is at least half the battle. But my reading of WP:BURO would make the comment "A procedural error made in posting anything, such as a proposal or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post" central to its intention. I say we don't delete that. CharlesWikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word.
That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia.
- causa sui
I'm sure that styles without central managers feature in management books, though. In fact I know they do. The question is whether it is more helpful to insist that the reality is a purist wiki/collaborative style of work with everything freeform, or to look the actuality in the face every now and again. The way we operate is a hybrid of pure wiki editing with other stuff. And being in denial about the scale issue seems head-in-the-sand to me. A wiki with 10,000 pages is a big wiki. And we have 1000 times that, one way and another.
Charles
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com mailto:charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Apoc 2400 wrote: > Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves and nominate "Wikipedia is not a > bureaucracy" for deletion? > "Bureaucracy" is a fairly helpful description of how Wikipedia actually functions, as far as management style is concerned. Decisions are taken according to practice that has been codified to some extent (in some areas, to a large extent). If you want to get something done, knowing where to go and how to apply is at least half the battle. But my reading of WP:BURO would make the comment "A procedural error made in posting anything, such as a proposal or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post" central to its intention. I say we don't delete that. CharlesWikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word.
That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia.
- causa sui
I'm sure that styles without central managers feature in management books, though. In fact I know they do. The question is whether it is more helpful to insist that the reality is a purist wiki/collaborative style of work with everything freeform, or to look the actuality in the face every now and again. The way we operate is a hybrid of pure wiki editing with other stuff. And being in denial about the scale issue seems head-in-the-sand to me. A wiki with 10,000 pages is a big wiki. And we have 1000 times that, one way and another.
Charles
That's the point made in the OP. Apoc2400 thinks that, since the reality is that Wikipedia has become greatly bureaucratized (he and I think that's a bad thing, you think it's a good thing, but that's beside the point) then we should stop kidding ourselves and get rid of WP:BURO. I want WP:BURO to stay because I want to have strong resistance to instruction creep and any complications of the editing process that make content contribution more and not less difficult for new users.
- causa sui
Ryan Delaney wrote:
That's the point made in the OP. Apoc2400 thinks that, since the reality is that Wikipedia has become greatly bureaucratized (he and I think that's a bad thing, you think it's a good thing, but that's beside the point) then we should stop kidding ourselves and get rid of WP:BURO.
No, I do not think it is a "good thing" - where did I say that? I think it is important not to be confused between discussions of what is really going on, within Wikipedia as it actually operates, and discussions at an idealised level (normally only backed up with some anecdotal if slight evidence). The other point I would like to make is that the problem really comes with people who think you make a bureaucracy work by being bureaucratic, when the opposite is true. WP:BURO is basically prescriptive, not descriptive (I'm against people who weasel by saying policy is basically descriptive not prescriptive whenever that suits them), and it tells us not to do that bureaucratic thing of using sensible procedural features in an obstructive fashion.
Charles
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
That's the point made in the OP. Apoc2400 thinks that, since the reality is that Wikipedia has become greatly bureaucratized (he and I think that's a bad thing, you think it's a good thing, but that's beside the point) then we should stop kidding ourselves and get rid of WP:BURO.
No, I do not think it is a "good thing" - where did I say that? I think it is important not to be confused between discussions of what is really going on, within Wikipedia as it actually operates, and discussions at an idealised level (normally only backed up with some anecdotal if slight evidence). The other point I would like to make is that the problem really comes with people who think you make a bureaucracy work by being bureaucratic, when the opposite is true. WP:BURO is basically prescriptive, not descriptive (I'm against people who weasel by saying policy is basically descriptive not prescriptive whenever that suits them), and it tells us not to do that bureaucratic thing of using sensible procedural features in an obstructive fashion.
Charles
It sounds to me like you're both making a similar point: that is, there's no reason to deny the reality that Wikipedia does have some bureaucratic elements. In the worst case, this leads to a rather Kafkaesque situation where people who are actually obstructed by bureaucracy being told by a bureaucrat that "Well, as you can see from our policies, this is not a bureaucracy." In this case it helps to have 20/20 vision about the fact that Wikipedia is, in fact, bureaucratic, because recognizing the problem is half of solving it.
If this is your view, then you probably would agree with a less polemical version of what I took the OP to be saying: Wikipedia *is* bureaucratic, and we ought to be honest about that.
- causa sui
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
It sounds to me like you're both making a similar point: that is, there's no reason to deny the reality that Wikipedia does have some bureaucratic elements. In the worst case, this leads to a rather Kafkaesque situation where people who are actually obstructed by bureaucracy being told by a bureaucrat that "Well, as you can see from our policies, this is not a bureaucracy." In this case it helps to have 20/20 vision about the fact that Wikipedia is, in fact, bureaucratic, because recognizing the problem is half of solving it.
If this is your view, then you probably would agree with a less polemical version of what I took the OP to be saying: Wikipedia *is* bureaucratic, and we ought to be honest about that.
Well, 1) no we aren't just a taco stand and 2) yes we do have more than one employee, so certainly its a no-brainer that we have apsects which can rightly be called "bureacratic." But this is quite different from saying that "Wikipedia is bureaucratic." It is not. WP simply has a mix of open and closed control systems that each have bureaucratic aspects.
-Stevertigo 'Your faith was strong but you needed proof, You saw me bathing on the roof...'
Wikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word.
Right.
That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but
if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia.
Absolutely. And for 90% of contributors, that is happily the case.
However, on the fringes; somewhat active pages, pages with at least one editor conflict, new pages, anon and newbie contributions, policy pages, pages somehow turned up for deletion : lots of different policies, aggregated over many years, come into play.
face every now and again. The way we operate is a hybrid of pure wiki editing with other stuff.
Yes.
And being in denial about the scale issue seems head-in-the-sand to me. A wiki with 10,000 pages is a big wiki. And we have 1000 times that, one way and another.
This argument isn't so simple. 90% of editors of our 10 million pages manage with fully distributed groups of 1-2 editors, wikiprojects of a dozen people, and a hundred automated bots and scripts. They dont need to know more than a couple of policies and guidelines, and can basically just look at a similar page elsewhere to figure out how to contribute.
10% of a project this size is still a lot, and that produces all of the light and noise. but it's not 'in denial' to say that our core policies of not being bureaucratic, ignoring rules where necessary, and being rightfully indignant when it seems bureaucracy rules the day in some corner of the project*, are what should guide 90% if not 100% of work on the Projects.
SJ
* even to the point of getting together and fixing that as an acknowledged problem :)
Ryan Delaney ryan.delaney@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word. That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia.
If you are right, that would mean that 1) Jimbo, 2) a Foundation that implements and prioritizes all new development, 3) a Board that does... something, 4) an Arbcom that tries hard (to tar and feather only the right people), 5) OFFICE, 5) and 6) a small army of <s>dorks</s> administrators (empowered, apparently to make un-reviewable 2-week blocks)... 'do not necessarily qualify as "managers."' On that basis its just simple logic that 'WP does not have' a '"management style"' and 'WP is not a "bureaucracy"'.
But we see cases all the time, though, where an entity says it is not something that it is, or is something that its not - North Korea for example. And that's to say nothing of the fact that *any entity that has *some notion of 'getting things done' likewise has some notion of 'managing things,' and thus has some certain concepts of "management." Hence anything with 'some concept of management' will likewise have a "management style." This is true regardless of how how chic (geek variation) it is to just say something 'there is no management style (there is only wiki).' (Note: The geekword "wiki" does not suffice in describing the Wikipedia's actual purpose, scope, or processes, let alone its systems).
So while WP may not have any "managers," nor does it implement a "management style," it still has elements that at least very very strongly resemble each, though perhaps badly. And of course even a taco stand with one employee can develop some kind of "bureaucracy" issues, so I don't see the point in continuing any pretense that suggests otherwise here. In fact, according to the traditional "canonical" terminology, Wikipedia doesn't even have "editors" - it only has "users."
-Stevertigo
There are 2 things wrong with this discussion.
1) someone replied to the proposal: "Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves ..."
Perhaps next time, consider the phrase: "It only takes one (1) reply, to turn a rant (1) into an argument (2)".
2) That page, [[WP:NOT]], is an abstraction of the workings of a community of 20,000+ participants. If you encounter Different individuals, you'll get Different results.
It is difficult to discuss Zen writings with Literal-mindedness, or to understand them in isolation: below the section WP:BURO is WP:ANARCHY. Any step away from Anarchy, begins Bureaucracy.
(there is only wiki).' (Note: The geekword "wiki" does not suffice in describing the Wikipedia's actual purpose, scope, or processes, let alone its systems).
exactly.
Quiddity