There are a lot of good ideas here (a community with much stronger civility expectations? bravo!).
I do object to this characterization though -
(English) Wikipedia is not intolerant of experts or hating of quality. Both are in fact widely found in the project, in limited scope areas.
en.wp is intolerant of experts who won't play ball with Wikipedia community. Some of those expectations on both sides are unfair or unreasonable. But the community building a project has to both survive as a community, and as individual contributors with your talents and capabilities and expertise. Your proposal to openly state and strongly enforce better civility expectations would be one such mechanism - and would be seen as hostility or intolerance by experts who have reached a point in their career and personal life where they are abusive to colleagues at times. We are not deferential without being intolerant. You seem to want to draw a different line there (good idea) but not escape the underlying tension between the community and some individuals.
Good luck...
-george
On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 8:42 PM, Thomas Larsen thomashlarsen.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
Hi folks,
I am formally proposing that Wikipedia be forked and that a new compendium of human knowledge, Wikipendium, be created as an independent alternative with a more pleasant, respectful, productive, constructive community with simple, clear rules and an unbureaucratic and responsible governance structure.
I believe, along with many others, that Wikipedia community members are frequently unjustifiably hostile towards viewpoints other than their own and towards the users who hold these viewpoints. In addition, I feel that Wikipedia has become too bureaucratic, ineffective, and indecisive and has placed the values of quantity and openness, while important, over those of quality and reliability respectively. I believe that Wikipedia's continued rejection of, and discrimination _against_, experts is outrageous and must be amended, but in a far less elitist and arrogant way than Citizendium has attempted.
The official proposal may be found as a blog at http://wikipendium.blogspot.com/ . All people who are interested are invited to participate in discussion there.
Best and friendly regards,
Thomas
-- Thomas H. Larsen thomashlarsen.wmf@gmail.com http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thomas_H._Larsen
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