[Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[The Cunctator]

A key problem is that it's difficult to find people who understand how
Wikipedia works but also want to disrupt the status quo. Most currently
active Wikipedians, pretty much by definition, like how Wikipedia works
right now. Even if they are concerned in theory about overall community
decline, the system *works for them*.

Changes to the system that would restore openness would probably make a
significant proportion of the existing active editor base less satisfied.
Right now, most Wikipedia editors enjoy having copyright paranoia,
wikilawyering, arguing about "notability" and "reliability", etc. etc.

Also, people's influence is, in some sense, a factor of how large the editor
base is. The smaller the editor base, the more your individual contributions
count.


Instead of just asking Wikipedia editors for advice, I'd go to people who
run and/or participate in MMORPGs, or people who have studied their social
dynamics, like Cory Doctorow and Raph Koster (
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/01/taxonomy-of-social-m.html).

That said, I know that the active Wikipedia editors really are awesome and
great people and are also REALLY good at collaborative editing. So maybe
there should be a wiki-effort in the Wikimedia space on online communities
and incentives and the such. Treat this problem as an editing challenge.


On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> On 03/29/11 1:43 AM, Yann Forget wrote:
> > 2011/3/29 ????<wiki-list at phizz.demon.co.uk>:
> >> Ah there is the reason, the sum of all human knowledge is approaching
> >> completion. Well done to all.
> > We are very far from that.
> > All the issue is that of notability.
> >
> > If we apply the current criteria, which is mainly applied on Western
> > subjects, to other parts of the world, we could have 10 times more
> > articles (villages and towns, local customs and food, etc.).
>
> By way of a reality check I just looked at the Spanish "Enciclopedia
> Universal Illustrada", Vol. 51 published in 1926.  This volume includes
> the not uncommon Spanish name "Reyes".  It contains 25 biographical
> articles with that simple surname. (I didn't look at the various
> compounds so frequently found in Spanish.) Of these 25, Mexican author
> Alfonso Reyes has an article in both en- and es-wp. Mexican general
> Bernardo Reyes appears only in en-wp. I saw no trace of the other 23 in
> either project.
>
> Ec
>
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