On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Eddie
Tejeda<eddie(a)visudo.com> wrote:
'Forget altruism. Misanthropy and egotism are
the fuel of online social
production. That's the conclusion suggested by a new study of the
character
traits of the contributors to Wikipedia. A team of Israeli research
psychologists gave personality tests to 69 Wikipedians and 70
non-Wikipedians. They discovered that, as New Scientist puts
it<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16349-psychologist-finds-wikipe…ml>,
Wikipedians are generally "grumpy," "disagreeable," and "closed
to new
ideas."'
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/06/the_sour_wikipe.php
I wonder how the mailing list will react....
Generally, my experiences are close to that conclusion.
The problem is that even it is a close approximation of Wikipedian
community, Wikipedian community is the best which humanity has.
Scientific communities all over the world are much worse: openness is
low, flexibility is low, vanity is high, scientific sincerity is
low... -- besides the characteristics of Wikipedians, which are, also,
characteristics of scientists. Not to talk about artists,
businesspersons, bankers, politicians...
Yes, that perspective is correct. We do fairly well, comparatively.
Fred