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
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
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
English Wikipedia did you mean?
2008/7/3 Thomas Larsen thomashlarsen.wmf@gmail.com:
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.
on 7/3/08 11:42 PM, Thomas Larsen at 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,
There are many who are content, even happy, with the state of the culture on the English Wikipedia. And there are many who are not. I am one of those who are not. I would be very interested in working with you on the Wikipendium Project.
Marc Riddell
I've only had a quick look at the proposal, but I can't see anywhere in it where you explain how you will make your version different from Wikipedia. All the values and principles you list *are* pretty much the values and principles of Wikipedia, they just aren't always followed particularly well and a large amount of bureaucracy has built up around them. Just stating that Wikipendium will be different won't make it so - how do you intend to avoid it becoming just like Wikipedia, since you're starting in almost exactly the same place?
On 04/07/2008, Thomas Larsen thomashlarsen.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
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.
Keep the content and reboot the community? Could be interesting.
I suggest one problem you'll see is how to maintain such a huge amount of content. Citizendium started off forking en:wp and discovered that it was not only a daunting amount of content to maintain, but it seemed to discourage people from working on the wiki - so they wiped all en:wp forked content that they hadn't yet edited, and started afresh. And they're progressing slowly but reasonably with mostly-fresh stuff.
Consider also in community governance: there are hundreds of Wikipedias, each operating independently - the communities are *very* different. You'll want to look at how each works (or doesn't), what patterns keep popping up, etc.
- d.
Well color me sceptical. Many of the problems you mention on the web page seem inherant to any large group of humans. I don't see how changing the rules can, of itself, address the fact that we all have opinions and we all consider them to be important. As this appears to be a major concern of the proposal, let me address this directly...
"Pleasantness and respectfulness will be effectively enforced on Wikipendium"
The concepts of "pleasantness" and "respectfulness" are very much open to interpretation - and thus opinion. How are we to decide if a comment is simply a poke-in-the-ribs for fun, or a seriously nasty note? This is often difficult in "real life", let alone the limited bandwidth of a text based media.
Perhaps it's just me, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that there can be a set of rules that can address this. Instead, it seems that a flexible case-by-case basis with many viewpoints is the only way to ensure that one person's view, the "constables" as you call them, doesn't become overarching. I believe the system on the Wikipedia had demonstrated itself to be workable beyond my own belief.
A word of advice: I had a friend who ran a very successful MUD about a decade ago. It was created out of the ashes of another MUD with rules very much like what you are proposing. This first attempt died a hasty death. Their second attempt was a free-for-all with self-policing by the members. It ran for years.
I don't want to sound like a downer, but in my limited experience, more rules generally makes things worse, not better. Generally the rules themselves become the points of argument. You can certainly see this on the Wikipedia, and I have argued on several occasions for re-writing some of them to be based more on common sense and less on the letter of the law. Maury _________________________________________________________________
Maury Markowitz wrote:
Well color me sceptical. Many of the problems you mention on the web page seem inherant to any large group of humans. I don't see how changing the rules can, of itself, address the fact that we all have opinions and we all consider them to be important. As this appears to be a major concern of the proposal, let me address this directly...
"Pleasantness and respectfulness will be effectively enforced on Wikipendium"
The concepts of "pleasantness" and "respectfulness" are very much open to interpretation - and thus opinion. How are we to decide if a comment is simply a poke-in-the-ribs for fun, or a seriously nasty note? This is often difficult in "real life", let alone the limited bandwidth of a text based media.
Perhaps it's just me, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that there can be a set of rules that can address this. Instead, it seems that a flexible case-by-case basis with many viewpoints is the only way to ensure that one person's view, the "constables" as you call them, doesn't become overarching. I believe the system on the Wikipedia had demonstrated itself to be workable beyond my own belief.
A word of advice: I had a friend who ran a very successful MUD about a decade ago. It was created out of the ashes of another MUD with rules very much like what you are proposing. This first attempt died a hasty death. Their second attempt was a free-for-all with self-policing by the members. It ran for years.
I don't want to sound like a downer, but in my limited experience, more rules generally makes things worse, not better. Generally the rules themselves become the points of argument. You can certainly see this on the Wikipedia, and I have argued on several occasions for re-writing some of them to be based more on common sense and less on the letter of the law.
I very much agree with this analysis. It is hard to conceive that a saviour will come along and lead the true-believers to the promised land. They will be lucky to find that peace in the promised land lasts as long as five minutes. The underlying ideals are a common thread in many such religious or political movements. Most of these devolve into either tyranny or ineffectuality.
Rule-making too often dwells on the relatively rare extreme cases. Devoting our efforts constructively to what kind of a project we want is a lot more fruitful than wasting a lot of time arguing about what to do with the occasional saboteur. It's easy for the builder to see these detailed rules as a threat to fundamental freedoms. It is too easy for these rules to be trotted out in situations that were not imagined when they were written.
Ec
Maury Markowitz wrote:
Well color me sceptical. Many of the problems you mention on the web page seem inherant to any large group of humans. I don't see how changing the rules can, of itself, address the fact that we all have opinions and we all consider them to be important. As this appears to be a major concern of the proposal, let me address this directly...
"Pleasantness and respectfulness will be effectively enforced on Wikipendium"
The concepts of "pleasantness" and "respectfulness" are very much open to interpretation - and thus opinion. How are we to decide if a comment is simply a poke-in-the-ribs for fun, or a seriously nasty note? This is often difficult in "real life", let alone the limited bandwidth of a text based media.
Perhaps it's just me, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that there can be a set of rules that can address this. Instead, it seems that a flexible case-by-case basis with many viewpoints is the only way to ensure that one person's view, the "constables" as you call them, doesn't become overarching. I believe the system on the Wikipedia had demonstrated itself to be workable beyond my own belief.
A word of advice: I had a friend who ran a very successful MUD about a decade ago. It was created out of the ashes of another MUD with rules very much like what you are proposing. This first attempt died a hasty death. Their second attempt was a free-for-all with self-policing by the members. It ran for years.
I don't want to sound like a downer, but in my limited experience, more rules generally makes things worse, not better. Generally the rules themselves become the points of argument. You can certainly see this on the Wikipedia, and I have argued on several occasions for re-writing some of them to be based more on common sense and less on the letter of the law.
on 7/4/08 1:03 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I very much agree with this analysis. It is hard to conceive that a saviour will come along and lead the true-believers to the promised land. They will be lucky to find that peace in the promised land lasts as long as five minutes. The underlying ideals are a common thread in many such religious or political movements. Most of these devolve into either tyranny or ineffectuality.
Rule-making too often dwells on the relatively rare extreme cases. Devoting our efforts constructively to what kind of a project we want is a lot more fruitful than wasting a lot of time arguing about what to do with the occasional saboteur. It's easy for the builder to see these detailed rules as a threat to fundamental freedoms. It is too easy for these rules to be trotted out in situations that were not imagined when they were written.
Ec
What would be required then, Ray, would be a whole new, fresh and very creative approach. Besides, for us here in the Colonies, this is our Independence Day! :-).
Marc
as long as five minutes. The underlying ideals are a common thread in > many such religious or political movements. Most of these devolve into > either tyranny or ineffectuality.
Interesting point! The historical record here is somewhat worrying. I can't count myself among the knowledgeable in terms of cultural studies, but off the top of my head the examples I can think of seem to have a high correlation with large stacks of bloated bodies.
On another note, I grew a little worried after some minor poking about. Thomas, I looked over your Contribs and found that you have made only 21 mainspace edits since the start of the year, and 10 of those were marked "minor". In that same time you made 46 edits to user talk pages, 121 edits on the Wikipedia namespace, and 45 to Wikipedia talk pages. That's a ratio of 10 to 1.
To me this suggests your primary interest in the Wikipedia is to use it as a social networking tool. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think you'll agree that that's not the primary purpose of the system. Perhaps your frustration comes from attempting to use the Wiki for a task it was never intended to support? This strikes me as akin to blaming a hammer for not being a very good screwdriver.
Maury
_________________________________________________________________
On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Maury Markowitz maury_markowitz@hotmail.com wrote: [snip]
Thomas, I looked over your Contribs and found that you have made only 21 mainspace edits since the start of the year, and 10 of those were marked "minor". In that same time you made 46 edits to user talk pages, 121 edits on the Wikipedia namespace, and 45 to Wikipedia talk pages. That's a ratio of 10 to 1.
To me this suggests your primary interest in the Wikipedia is to use it as a social networking tool. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think you'll agree that that's not the primary purpose of the system.
[snip]
"primary interest in Wikipedia is to use it as a social networking tool" is a pretty enormous leap from some namespace ratios, and I'm going to guess that it most likely isn't the case.
I think most of us start off with BIG IDEAS on how to improve things. With time we realize that most were misguided, some outright foolish, and this increases over time. After a few years of involvement we reach the point where it seems obvious that almost nothing can work. :) We shouldn't mistake the misguided ideas and exuberance of the inexperienced for attempted social networking any more than we should mistake it for brilliant leadership, or any more than we should mistake the frequent cynicism of the old-timers for the fundamental truth.
On another point: If, on the real merits of a users contributions, it's clear that they really are using Wikipedia primarily for social networking then thats not okay and there is something wrong with that. Wikipedia has a mission, we've got a job to do. We should be expansive in what we consider contribution, but so much as to include pure social networking. Comradeship between contributors is essential but dead weight is not beneficial.
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.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your interesting idea. I'm curious what your end goal for the content is. Part of the power of Wikipedia is that at the end of the day we can point to a grand mission for the whole project -- to create freely accessible encyclopedias in all languages, about just about everything. ("We're here to write an encyclopedia, and everything else is just details" has been a core part of the culture for as long as I am aware). The Foundation mission ("The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free content license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally") is vague, but it does pretty much encompass what the projects do.
Your proposal is very eloquent, but it seems to be primarily focussed on how the community of the new project would function. Is, however, the end goal for that community roughly the same as Wikipedia's/Wikimedia's, or are you interested in something different? I got "a useful, reliable, and free compendium of human knowledge" from the proposal, which sounds just about like Wikimedia's mission. Is that accurate, or do you have something else in mind?
-- phoebe
Hi,
[snip]
Your proposal is very eloquent, but it seems to be primarily focussed on how the community of the new project would function. Is, however, the end goal for that community roughly the same as Wikipedia's/Wikimedia's, or are you interested in something different? I got "a useful, reliable, and free compendium of human knowledge" from the proposal, which sounds just about like Wikimedia's mission. Is that accurate, or do you have something else in mind?
-- phoebe
Yes, you might say that the grand vision of Wikipendium is similar to Wikipedia's. I describe my ultimate vision for Wikipendium in the first couple of paragraphs in the proposal, and the more practical mission is to create a useful, reliable, and free (as in beer and speech) compendium of human knowledge. Wikipedia would claims to have a similar mission and vision, but I'm dubious about how it strives towards, and adheres, to it.
Thomas
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