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

[John Lee]

On 6/7/07, Gabe Johnson <gjzilla at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/6/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 06/06/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > Ah, no. It presumes that the old core successfully enculturate a new
> > core - not that the very same people remain in a position of power,
> > but that a group of people who think the same way as them do.
> >
> > Wikipedia, as a community, *really* dropped the ball on enculturating
> > newcomers in or around early 06; I wish I knew why or when or how, but
> > I don't. It's reasonable to say that before a certain point, new users
> > were met and slowly enculturated into the general "way we do things
> > around here"; after a certain point, this stopped working as well.
> >
> > And so we end up with... well, groups of people who just appear to
> > inhabit a different project, who came here thinking this was an
> > experiment in online democracy or a neat social-networking site or a
> > place to strike a blow against The Man, *and were never convinced
> > otherwise*. By the time any group of different initial assumptions has
> > grown large and old enough it looks like the old guard to new users,
> > then the project's governance and culture is heading in interesting
> > directions.
> >
> > --
> > - Andrew Gray
> >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> >
>
> [[Eternal September]]? ~~~~


Indeed. I'm not sure if Andrew has the date down right, but some time in
2006 seems correct. I remember feeling impressed around the beginning of '06
that I was still seeing new admins and editors who shared the same
philosophy and principles of Wikipedians I remember from when I started out
in '03/'04, but I can't recall having a similar experience since then.

Johnleemk