Karl Juhnke wrote:
Larry,
<snip excellent discussion>
Semi-decent articles are only immune to editing until someone with just slightly more expertise comes along. I say slightly more, because contributors with vastly more expertise may well consider an article not worth saving. The person who is attracted is not the absolute expert, but the relative expert who thinks, "Hmm, solid start, but X needs to be added and Y needs to be fixed and the whole thing refactored." This contributor then makes the article as good as s/he can, setting the stage for a slightly more expert person to be attracted. Eventually Wikipedia will rise to the level at a few of the foremost experts in the world are duking it out in their respective arenas.
Perhaps multiple arenas differentiated on multiple axis will also occur which form a weighted uncertainty zones around the solid/stable mainstream view. Thus revisionists and ideologues can be engaged in flame war without disturbing the grade school kiddies researching their "What I did last summer" papers or scholars are at the leading edge trying to figure out how to prove empiricially which self consistent hypothesis matches reality closest to always skeptical generalists at large.
In this extreme, Wikipedia becomes a somewhat continuous body of knowledge which the browser can move through to review at their own level as they are ready to absorb what is solidly "known", critically assess or question details, or add previously undocumented draft tidbits. One can look for what is reliably known and widely accepted or for the chinks or messy remaining details or for the better discussion addressing remaining questions and best judgment of leading scholars regarding specific information.
My only counsel is patience. The quality (not just the size) of Wikipedia is improving as we speak. Better quality attracts people with more expertise. It is a virtuous cycle. I say that it will work in the long run, not based on some wild hypothesis, but because IT IS ALREADY WORKING in the short run.
The positive feedback cycle driving growth (higher content quality and quantity attracting contributers, more contributors create incrementally higher local quality and more content) will stabilize at some point from our system or community dynamics or environment.
Revision Control - This issue is already substracting some growth not only in new contributors but, even more dramatically, eroding long standing contributors. This means we are losing project expertise developed locally from long time effective participation. The question is can Edit War be replaced by a better mechanism? If so, what is a better mechanism to try out? At the other extreme Nupedia's formal controls have apparently not worked out well. I suggest small increments of modification to the current wiki way.
Behavior Standards - What are the minimum standards of behavior and how are they enforced? This is more corrosive than many believe because people inherently expect "fair" behavior. Observing community violation of personal expectations of fairness will have impacts on the individuals observing or participating as well as the victims. As discomfort levels reach personal thresholds and people leave what has become a stressful environment, the community growth curve will negatively influenced. It is the expectations, not any specific absolute standard which must be successfully articulated and met for the long term benefit of the community.
Casual contempt of others efforts. Our process of continuous improvement of the material fundamentally relies on several assumptions:
1. Most people share the same goal priorities: Highest overall content quality possible is a higher priority than satisfaction of personal agendas or ego.
2. Poor material will be replaced on an opportunistic basis in small and large chunks at the whim of random contributors and fixated specialists alike.
3. Brilliant, accurate, factual (or at least NPOV) information is sticky. It will tend to remain in the content as experienced editors leave alone what they cannot improve. Errors in judgement will be reverted by subsequent editors.
4. People are natively capable of applying sound editorial judgement and this judgement will improve, relative to community standards (articulated and implicit), with ongoing community interaction.
In summary: In the aggregate, participation in good faith results in steady improvement of the current and future value of contributors efforts and in the accumulated value of the content.
Contempt for others' efforts breaks all of the above assumptions.
Mailing list volume. As changes are accepted by the mailing list, people who dislike them but do not choose to participate in the mailing will either adjust, gripe, leave, be diverted to meta, or join the mailing list. Changes are thus a net negative influence in the short term growth of content contribution. Small gradual change will have less short term impact. Research exists that show mailing lists to be a small group phenomenon which tend to stabilize and mature in predictable life cycle patterns. As the mailing list is currently our primary community governing process it may be a limiting factor in the size of the community; if we assume a fixed percentage of contributors like to participate in self government.
If we assume that people like to ignore governing issues unless controversy arises, at which time they like to be heard, then the community may undergo a pattern of cyclic growth. Each consensus leading to a lull on the mailing list with corresponding growth in contribution until the community grows sufficiently that newcomers with new attitudes or size magnifies the effect of previously negligable problems such that the mailing list becomes overly active once again.
The above assumes the mailing list is primarily for consenus building and discussion of meta issues. If it also serves a primary coordination role in community affairs then the steady state volume may begin to scale exponentially with increased group size.
Shifting leadership to an external panel of authorities potentially eliminates the mailing list limitation and replaces it with another. How many volunteers wish to work for nothing under the direction or leadership of busy authorities with credentials they cannot (at whim) compete with or influence? At the moment all who choose to contribute but not participate in the mailing list can, at whim, join the pubic mailing list and attempt to influence policy and/or custom. Busy authorities in charge break this current community consensus building model just as a governing or operational distinction is forming: If you will not collaborate nicely (you have irritated several influential regulars by repeatedly violating local customs and in their perception wasted their time because you will not learn better fast enough) and will not come talk to the mailing list to help build a better consensus (set of customs, implicit and articulated) then you may be banned for the benefit of the project.
Meta. This was an interesting experiment in diversion and ignoring contentious issues and people. Perhaps it will eventually grow into a discussion forum. It may or may not scale better with large groups. I have not run across any scholarly review of wiki group dynamics online yet. One problem it seems to have is that the articles there are viewed as personal positions not to be edited rather than as a starting point for consensus building or collaboration. This may be because topics there are known to be controversial and people wish to avoid ideological edit war or perhaps feel that the original positions need to be preserved for newcomers in the future. Whatever the reason, participation at meta has been fairly slow and much of it seems abandoned.
regards Mike Irwin