Erik wrote:
.... As we become more popular, inevitably, these same problematic suggestions and others will be made more often. But we're a large community, with many thoughtful members like yourself who are aware of the problems, and I just don't see us doing anything stupid just because we become larger. ....
I agree.
What I've noticed is that as we get more and more contributors we get more and more eyeballs checking each edit. So even though the number of bad edits has increased greatly (which is alarming to some), their percentage of the total has not changed and IMO has gone down over time. So far this has scaled really well.
The only problem times are when we are being hit hard due to media exposure. Then the number of Anon edits increases dramatically; most are good to great edits but a certain percentage are bad; all have to be checked anyway which is taxing on old hands (thus the need for the Fire Dept). But after a day or two things settle down and we get a new group of user accounts and a certain percentage of these become old hands in no time and Wikipedia is all the better due to new talent and energy. This also seems to scale very well.
Well-timed and prepared-for media exposure is an investment that pays great dividends. We should not be afraid of it (esp now that the Foundation can take donations; we should also seek tax-exempt status in other nations too - every bit helps).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)