[Foundation-l] Call for participation in Epistemia, a new wiki encyclopedia

[Thomas Larsen]

Hi all,

On 2/4/09, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> Basically you've just said "we're going to be just like wikipdia except
>> we
>> won't let incivlity, personal attacks and other bad stuff like that
>> happen".
>> How will you stop it? Blocking? Then you're just like wikipedia.
>
> Actually, no. Wikipedia no longer enforces civility. At least not against
> aggressive well-established players like Giano. Actually, it never did
> much. So, whoever is aggressive and persistent can determine the content
> of the information on the 8th largest website.

Fred Bauder has it exactly right. Wikipedians now accept incivility
and rudeness as part of their daily operations. Worse, some of them
seem to believe that it's actually a _good_ thing.

Epistemia's culture, from the very start, will be one where incivility
and rudeness are rejected without question. Indeed, our policy (found
at http://meta.epistemia.org/wiki/Policy, and it's all on one page, by
the way!) states that "[i]n order to maintain a positive community and
a productive environment in which to work, users who deliberately
engage in serious or repeated violations of these standards may be
banned indefinitely from participating, regardless of the quality or
extent of their work on the project". That's a far cry from
Wikipedia's civility policy, which states that "[a] pattern of
incivility is disruptive and unacceptable, and may result in blocks if
it rises to the level of harassment or egregious personal
attacks"—Wikipedia is so keen to attract contributors that it only
blocks people for incivility if that incivility rises to the level of
harassment or personal attacks.

I invite you to step up, create an account at Epistemia, and start
contributing—or, at least, offer your views and give constructive
criticism. We're open to improvement.

—Thomas Larsen