[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[George Herbert]

On 2/26/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > > On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
> > >> I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is primarily
> > >> written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
> > >
> > > and
> > >
> > >> Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people
> > >> working on
> > >> Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia
> > >> just
> > >> because outsiders think it's broken.
> >
> > on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner at gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think,
> > > 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
>
>
>
>
> > They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
>
> > I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
> > > we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
>
>
> I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the way
> you think it should work.  My comments relate to the former.  Yours relate
> to the latter.
>
> If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia
> work the way you think it should work, more power to you.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the goals and desires of
the individuals contributing are not the same as the goals and desires
of the collective organization.

An individual will contribute what they want to, true, but we can
structurally set things up and guide them at the organizational level
(policies, participation in meta-discussions, etc) to encourage or
discourage individual behaviors among admins.


In general, if an expert in a field tells someone in Wikipedia
leadership (loosely, anyone who's participating actively... if you
post to Wikien-L you probably count) that they think that WP covers
their area of expertise poorly, the leader should inquire further to
find out if they understand Wikipedia (many won't, and engagement
there will be helpful).

If they do basically understand Wikipedia, then we might want to listen to them.

In particular, criticism from outside that our processes are opaque or
too complicated or too arbitrary should be listened to.  Some of the
most insightful comments on our processes come from new users who have
just encountered them for the first time.

Process evolves for reasons, both internal and external.  Process is
largely but not exclusively executed by insiders who have high degrees
of knowledge of the system.  If we intend to form an oligarchy of the
insider, we can ignore outside complaints about the process, but
that's sort of antithetical to the project's goals in the first place.


My two cents: out current AFD suffers from lack of consistent
notability guidelines.  Our notability guidelines suffer from lack of
consensus - we're in a dynamic tension between inclusionism and
deletionism.  They are not clearer and more precise because we don't
fundamentally agree about what we're trying to do with them.

This is no doubt baffling to the uninitiated.

The only real way to seriously improve things is ultimately to pick a
set of notability pillars from whence topic-specific notability
guidelines can be derived.  I do not know if there is enough common
ground for a consensus be develop on what those could be; it might
have to be imposed from without (or Jimbo fiat, or some such) to
succeed.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com