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

[Andrew Gray]

On 06/06/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I did an unscientific test a while back which pegged "RFA goes crazy"
at or around the first quarter of 2006. That was also when we hit the
crazy userbox fiasco, and the weird cultural shift from the
Siegenthaler thing, which doesn't sound like a bad marker.

I would say that by twelve months ago, we were irrevocably past the
tipping point; fifteen or eighteen months maybe not quite there.

I will love to read this chapter when someone writes a history of the project!

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk