Hello,
As a rare newcomer to the Wikimedia project, I've been thinking of some of
the factors that seem to discourage me from contributing and one of the
primary ones seem to be the fact that the way the administration is
organized and rules enforced is often vague and unclear. The definition and
the method of collection of the vague idea of "Consensus" aren't easily
found and take a lot of digging to get out.
A lot of the guideline is often mixed with philosophical rants that often
seem to contradict each other and has grown in size to the point that it's
unreasonable for any newcomer to have read through it all. The project
designed to work on consensus and community often seems unresponsive and
automated as anarchic communication structure impedes effective
communication by forcing users to learn an obscure markup language just to
communicate.
I'm wondering if there have been any whitepapers on addressing these
problems especialy the ones about bureaucracy, reading through the news I
remember a lot of hay being made about a decline in Wikipedia editor from a
few years back but that seems ot have faded. Is there any hard data on the
future trajectory of the project?
--
Sincerely,
Zubin Jain