Marc Riddell
The mood is angry, the
climate is cold, and the culture in trouble.
on 10/15/07 5:44 PM,
charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com at
charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com wrote:
Do realise that the people happy getting on with
editing are doing exactly
that. People on the site externalising all sorts of other, perhaps negative
things, are doing what happens in many other places on the Internet. They are
filling blanks on the screen in front of them, with whatever they have to
hand.
I doubt the culture is in more trouble than it has been before, really. There
is an air of greater seriousness about the site's administration, that kicked
in around two years ago. David Gerard's style of comments is one way of
explaining that. Mine, actually, another. Fred Bauder's would be another. Kat
Walsh's, when we get them, another again. The main point would be that these
comments are informed. We all see rather different things in the ink blot.
Now, I think you are looking at a part of the picture where you can bring
expertise to bear. The rest of us are in the position, very different really,
of treating Wikipedia as something on which no one knows enough to be treated
as an expert
Charles,
My "expertise" is with people; how they respond, react and interact with
other people, and the effects this has on both, and to what they are trying
to accomplish in life. That is what I want to contribute to this Project.
Like it or not the Project has evolved to involve more than simply filling
pages with encyclopedic information. There is a living, breathing group of
people in there trying to work together, and, in many cases, not doing very
well. This does affect the content of the encyclopedia.
My message is uncomfortable to many. But this has been my professional
realty for 42 years now. And Berkeley was a good training ground for this in
more ways than one :-)
Marc