[WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

[Marc Riddell]

on 1/30/07 9:11 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:

> You always have the right to stop reading a Wikipedia talk page, email, or
> such.
> 
> The problem is that those forums constitute the only mechanisms by
> which nearly all decision-making happens in Wikipedia.  You can't go
> "I'm going to go over to that room there, with these other people, and
> stop listening to the guy shouting into the megaphone".  There's only
> one "room" per topic (or, a small set, of meta-topic rooms plus the
> right one).  If someone's abusing others, their only options short of
> some form of community imposed censorship are to stop participating.
> 
> Every forum I have seen people try to build online, without exception,
> has failed and fallen apart if there wasn't a mechanism by which
> abusive contributors could be exiled.  There have also been a fair
> number of places where tin-pot dictators stifle discussion - there's
> no doubt that there's a continuum from undercontrol to overcontrol.
> Wikipedia is operating comfortably in the middle ground, which is in
> my experience and opinion the only place that an online community can
> survive.
> 
> There have been various academic studies on the topic of interpersonal
> communications and community standards online; I don't have convenient
> citations, but it's out there.  They have observed the same thing.

George,

I bow (ever so slightly ;-) ) to your experience with the online forum. I
have, and still am, learning a lot about it from all of the responses I've
gotten here - that's why I brought it up in the first place.

I'm going to check out some of the studies you referred to. But, as in the
session room, I usually learn more of what I need to know from the person(s)
who are experiencing it everyday.

Marc


-- 
A work of art is the artist's way of sorting out the chaos.