[WikiEN-l] Re: How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

[Michael Snow]

uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>One thing that is clear is that the community can't make any
>nonincremental changes to policy itself without solid leadership, and
>there are any number of contributors with social insight who have quit
>even discussing meaningful change (as well as those who have quit the
>project entirely) because of the impossibility of accomplishing it. 
>  
>
With respect to this list in particular, that might be because not only 
is meaningful change impossible without some kind of deus ex machina, 
but even meaningful discussion of change is often impossible.

>The reasons for this have to do with the size of the contributor base,
>the fact of the developers not being accountable to the community, and
>the presence of many contributors who are perhaps excellent writers and
>editors but who lack skills and experience in group decisionmaking.
>  
>
I agree in part, although developer work has little direct bearing on 
some of the changes that could be discussed. The last point can be an 
issue, although I would say that organizational cultures often stand in 
for skills and experience; even among successful groups, a large 
contingent with prior real training in group decisionmaking is somewhat 
rare.

But the size of the community is definitely making the adjustment 
process more chaotic and dysfunctional. A couple months ago, I estimated 
that the functional size of the English Wikipedia community was 
equivalent to a town of 15,000 people. It might be as much as 20,000 
now, though due to the change in procedure for the Arbitration Committee 
elections, I'm unable to update my method of estimating this.

These kinds of numbers severely strain the ability of an impromptu 
system of law and order to keep up, as can be seen in the history of 
boom towns in the American West. Their outer limits, if their appeal to 
settlers could hold out that long, I would peg the limit at about 
30,000, and that scenario would bring rampant problems like massive 
fires, labor disputes turning violent, and widespread vigilantism. 
Beyond that size, the towns had to develop real systems of government or 
be abandoned to a future as museum pieces.

In our case, compared to say a mining economy, we're lucky. Our vein of 
ore need not run out. But as our success is less dependent on such 
outside factors, it depends instead on internal issues like improving 
community self-government. We must create an environment in which people 
will still be comfortable developing the resource we have. If the public 
loses the general perception that, on balance, our content improves over 
time, then the Great Wikipedia Gold Rush will be over.

--Michael Snow