Mike Godwin wrote:
I read the article in the Chronicle pretty carefully.
The author's
experience struck me as an example of a pattern that may account for
the flattening of the growth curve in new editors as well as for some
other phenomena. As you may remember, Andrew Lih conducted a
presentation on "the policy thicket" at Wikimania almost five years
ago. The wielding of policy by long-term editors, plus the rewriting
of the policy so that it is used to undercut NPOV rather than preserve
it, strikes me as worth talking about.
Mike, thanks for the re-mention, and that same thing definitely stuck
out to me.
We have hit upon perhaps the perfect Achilles Hell of Wikipedia with
this case -- conscientious, non-combative user tries to reason with
the veteran editor crowd and gets rebuffed. After two years comes back
with well-crafted scholarship to support his case but gets tossed the
book of overly-broad policy that has accumulated in the interest of
combating specific cases of minority and fringe content.
What winds up happening is that it filters out legitimate
contributions and potential excellent contributors.
I've buried the lede, but tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll be on NPR's Talk
of the Nation radio show with Timothy Messer-Kruse himself, to talk
about his experiences.
Tune in, and feel free to send questions/comments my way (that are helpful!)
-Andrew