[WikiEN-l] The admin problem

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/1/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:

> Would we produce a great encyclopaedia if we all thought and worked the same
> way? I'm thinking that a certain degree of tension, conflict and competition
> helps us go beyond the banal. Some of the best features of Wikipedia are
> produced as a way of handling conflict. 3RR, for instance. It's silly, but
> it works.

We would definitely have more POV problems. Imagine a group of
like-minded anti-abortionists sitting down to work, uninterrupted, on
[[Abortion]]. You wouldn't have a single revert, edit war, personal
attack, RfC or arbitration. But would the article end up with 73
references, and at least a passing resemblence of NPOV?

On the other hand, at a certain level, excessive conflict clearly does
interfere with getting the job done. Just like how a workplace with no
coffee breaks loses morale, a workplace with more coffee break time
than work time is clearly even more inefficient.

Are we far from the happy medium?

Steve