[WikiEN-l] Why are veterans so militant of late; The Future. (was Bus Uncle)

[Joe Szilagyi]

On 6/5/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia, though, has remained under the effective control of a
> pretty small part of the community.  And the core community has grown
> more effective as it has learned what it does and doesn't want the
> encyclopedia to be... <snip>


Unfortunately, this makes two pretty presumtuous statements. One, it
presumes that the 'old core' of admins, those that can trace their WP time
back to 2004-05 and earlier, will remain in power. Simple math says you
won't be; a simple countdown began when Wikipedia became popular that
dictates this--*unless* it is codified somehow that some people based on
seniority get more clout, and it's enforced.

The core community per-person has 'power' in the sense that the others of
the core community support them. There is such a constant influx of new
people and new administrators all the time, however, that the value of the
old cliques, cabals, and 'cores' will be simply another small party in the
future. Sure, some of the new people will go along. But from a simple point
of realism, and from a sociological standpoint, this will not be in the end.


WP is a system that, by design as David said, is un-designed. The only
immutable things are state of Florida and United States legal matters.
Everything else can be changed with enough pushing be it a little or a lot.
Let's not be coy--the 'core' community of editors, admins, and defrocked
admins you refer to numbers at best around 100 people or less. Unless the
system itself is changed to do something to assure that this core be held in
some higher level of clout, when pushes comes to shove, there will be no
recourse but to edit war over policy pages (gee, that's not happening almost
daily yet, is it?) or to have absurdly overblown RFAR hearings over minutae.

A system that as worded gives everyone equal rank means that a small group
in the system, without either active bringing people into it's fold and
working to bring others around to it's way of thinking... will fade away.
What does that mean, Tony? Convince people of the value of the changes YOU
want. The old ways of "click it, forget it, and then say Fuck Process with
my apparenty incivility pass" won't work. You will need to sell the worth
and value of what you're after. Or else the strength of crowds in the end
will simply revert your ideas away as just another edit warrior. Fight back
blindly by clicking away with the Fuck Process mentality, and the But The
Cabal Is Right mentality, and you'll find yourself on the losing side of 3rr
blocks. Enough of this, and you--or anyone--will end up on the receiving end
of a indefinite ban firing squad on CSN or ANI or wherever.

My point is, in short, that the simple weight of the massive number of users
will be deciding on the ultimate path and fate of Wikipedia. Not Tony
Sidaway, nor David, nor Kelly Martin, nor Jimbo Wales, nor me, nor any other
lone person, or small group of people. In 'x' number of months or years,
unless the system is codified differently, you and five other people saying,
"This will not stand, this will be changed," on a given matter, may find
yourself impotently starting down four or five times as many people.

You will have no recourse but to go along with them, scream about it, or
leave. To contrast: people liked to say that my old admin recall ideas where
ultra-extremist, ultra-minority; and they like to say that Badlydrawnjeff's
views are often the same. That's fine, for today, early June, 2007. The same
perspective may well apply to the current views of the "Core' come early
June, 2008 or 2009, when their ideas are outnumbered by people 7:1 or 10:1.

Regards,
Joe
http://www.joeszilagyi.com