[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a cult

[David Goodman]

I made that comment, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. This was an
discussion that got little attention, because the only [people who
knew about the subject enough to say anything hadn't noticed it. I
knew just enough about it to recognize that I did not have the
knowledge to know where the sources would be. (I should of course have
asked for help from there myself)

I don't expect to participate in every AfD, only in those where I
either know enough to evaluate or see something general enough to
contribute usefully. I've learned, for example, not to attempt to
discuss programming languages, and unless people are there who are
able to discuss them, only the obvious cases can be decided.
Fortunately, there are always people around AfD who do know about
programming languages. There are unfortunately fewer chemists, and
they're not always paying attention. There's a formal structure for
notifying wikiprojects, but the keywords apparently didn't work in
this case. WP would be lost without the specialists--it would be the
same know-it-all environment  that produced the superficial articles
of the first two or three years. it goes better now because some of
the specialists are tough enough to stick around. The ones who were
too tender to accept challenge from the uneducated have left.

It's this combination that makes the collaboration--as is appropriate
for a general encyclopedia--people who do know writing to be judged by
those who don't--just as our readers judge. It should be familiar to
any teacher--the exchange goes both ways.

Possibly I and Todd do agree after all. -- David DGG

On 6/24/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
 > And hopefully that discussion will include some talk about the
> pernicious amount of OWNership that goes on. Quite often, if you haven't
> already been contributing to a page for quite a while, you'll be
> summarily reverted if you edit the article and ignored if you post to
> talk. I've also noticed some Wikiprojects, or at least some members,
> being particularly bad about thinking that articles in their area are
> "theirs". Wikiprojects don't OWN articles any more than any individual
> does, the community as a whole does. I recall seeing a comment at an AfD
> I recently closed, something to the effect of "This needs to run another
> five days, Wikiproject Chemistry wasn't notified!" and shaking my head
> in disbelief. Wikiproject Chemistry doesn't decide what happens to that
> article (nor should they be CANVASSed so that they de facto can), the
> whole community does. (As it was, it was kept anyway.)
>
> This is, of course, only something one person said, and may not at all
> reflect the actual viewpoint of most in Wikiproject Chemistry. But it
> certainly reflects the "Hey, this is OUR turf!" mentality that happens
> all too often.
>
> In another case, where the use of binary vs. decimal prefixes for data
> capacities was being debated, it was frequently asserted that
> "contributors" to an article should have the final say, "contributor"
> defined as someone who's made a substantial number of edits to it. Talk
> about having it exactly backward-anyone who makes a good-faith,
> non-vandal edit to an article is a contributor to said article. This is
> another example of the nasty, pernicious, "my turf" attitude.
>
> There are countless others-the relentless hostility toward those who cut
> or delete (does anyone know what "editor" actually means?), reverting
> new contributors who make poor but good-faith edits instead of educating
> them, and the list goes on and on and on.
>
> I hope we can come up with a solution to this at some point. We're sure
> in need of one. Maybe we could start by placing this notice at the -top-
> of the edit page, in bold, red, 40-point type:
>
> "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or
> redistributed by others, *do not submit it*."
>
>
> _______________________________________________
 --
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.