Hello Martin,
On 9/22/06, Martin Walker walkerma@potsdam.edu wrote:
The English Wikipedia is littered with many "big ideas" and longterm plans that have evoked lively debate and high emotion at the time, but most of these ideas die out when it becomes apparent that they lead nowhere.
"becomes apparent" doesn't mean that they couldn't have lead somewhere with the right specificity, leadership by example, scalability, and listening (to list your points below). Some excellent ideas may have been discarded as unworkable.
it's just that we need to have processes to bring ideas forward into reality.
<thread connvergence : recalling a recent Process Essay>
Let's consider one of the old chestnuts, article assessment. One year ago,
I've added a section for model wikiprojects to the 'parallels' page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parallels#Wikiproject_models
- Set some specific goals
- These goals should visibly lead to a larger goal in the medium term
- Lead by example: You can't expect others to do work for you
- Find a way to scale it up
- Listen to others: I think sometimes we're so busy pushing our own big
ideas we don't bother to listen to others. Often we can put several big ideas together to make one big idea that works. Then you have a core of people with ownership of the idea who can get the idea started.
I've added this to the parallels page as well. The last point is especially important. Frequently people who care deeply about the same thing struggle more with one another than with the apathy of the wider community.
So by all means let us dream some dreams, but let's then carefully design some targeted projects with real, tangible goals, and get to work!
In other words, revision 2 of "dreams, goals, and milestones", after reprioritization by profs. Whitesides and Walker, should be "milestones, goals, and dreams" ...
--SJ