[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's a job?

[William Pietri]

When I saw in my watchlist yesterday that somebody had XfD'd 
[[WP:BJAODN]], I honestly thought it was a bad joke until just now, when 
I bothered to look at the actual details.

    
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bad_Jokes_and_Other_Deleted_Nonsense

Turns out that somebody just went and deleted most of it, and the XfD is 
just for cleaning up the last bits:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN#BJAODN_Deleted

Leaving the merits of this particular action aside, I saw more than one 
person suggest that our job was to write an encyclopedia, and that 
anything else was a waste of time. That troubles me.


Part of what I do for a living is to go around to companies and help 
them with software teams that aren't delivering. Actually, more often I 
help bosses see how they are getting in the team's way of delivering. 
But that doesn't sell as well, so let's keep that our secret.

Anyhow, one of the first things I look for is a shared team sense of 
humor. It's not a primary cause of good work, of course, but I think 
it's a great quick indicator of various sorts of cultural and process 
health. Moreover, time spent on joking around is great for team bonding, 
and provides positive and rewarding experiences that help carry people 
through difficulty and dark thoughts.

Sure, too much goofing off is no good, and we don't want Wikipedia to be 
hijacked by people whose main focus is frivolity. But I think it's a 
mistake for people to tell their fellow editors that they are just 
wasting time on X when, gosh darn it, we have an encyclopedia to write.

I just don't believe that the common reaction will be to say, "Golly, 
then I'll stop doing the thing I was motivated by and come work on the 
thing you have declared I should want to do." I expect people will only 
get the first half of that, not the second.

William