[WikiEN-l] WP Structure (Offshoot from: Admins shouldn't shoot back)

[Michael Noda]

On 6/24/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Wait a minute! I woke up this morning and, in all senses, smelled the
> coffee. What are we doing here!?! We appear to be embarking on a serious
> discussion of structuring an entity that, supposedly, already exists. We are
> not developers staring at a blank screen, or sheet of paper (to place it in
> my era) planning something from the ground up.
>
> Before I spend another second of my time on this issue, or ask anyone else
> to do the same, I need to be taught some things:
>
> 1) Where does the founder, Jimmy Wales, fit into all of this? Isn't this
> something he should be initiating, or, at the very least, directly involved
> in? And what do you, Jimmy, think of the present day-to-day operating
> structure of the Project?
>
> 2) What is the Foundation's role in the issue of the Project's structure?
> And, what responsibility does it have in overseeing such a venture.
>
> 3) Who, or what, in fact does direct the day-to-day functioning of the
> Project right now?
>
> 4) If we did come up with an extraordinarily creative plan for structuring
> the Project (and with Berks in the works no doubt we would :-)) ­ to whom
> would we present it for implementation?
>
> Our work on this should not be seen as simply a catharsis for some restless
> natives.
>
> Marc Riddell

I hate to be the one who rains on your moment of revelation, but your
questions seem to be underpinned by the fallacy that, because a
structure exists, it was created.  Wikipedia and many of the
structures attached to it are examples of emergent systems.  Not only
do the structures you keep expecting to find not exist, but the
structural foundations they would rest on also do not exist.

An appropriate metaphor is that of a hurricane; it's large and
"organized", but nobody (well, no meteorologist) would claim that
there is any agency or intention behind the organization; that's just
what sometimes happens when you have water, angular momentum, and
heat.  Now let us say that you have a big mirror in space that can
warm or cool the planet by directing more or fewer of the sun's rays
at the Earth.  Could you potentially use this mirror to affect
hurricanes?  Yes.  Could you do so with any precision or assurance of
success?  Absolutely not.  You would be using an instrument far too
large and blunt to have any idea what the result would be.

You keep making the presupposition that we can create a new culture
and new structures, because we have a culture and structures that we
must have created once, and we can easily repeat what we have already
done.  The trap is that we did not create what we have today; it arose
organically.  And we don't know what changes we may try to make will
converge to zero and fizzle, or which ones will have a multiplier
effect that will spin them out of our control, like something out of
the Sorcerer's Apprentice.  We don't know; we provably cannot know,
until we try.  But we need to know going in that our tools are very
large and very blunt.

Our article on emergence, at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence>,
is actually not that good; it doesn't lend itself to the layman,
although as usual it does present a somewhat decent overview.
However, the external links section is stuffed with gems, including
<http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects/emergence/>, which uses cellular
automata to introduce basic ideas (requires java) and
<http://www.timgooding.com/>, which talks about emergence in human
behavior.  I highly recommend reading up extensively on the topic of
emergence, because until you grok it, very, very little of this place
is going to make any sense at all.


Thank you,
-Michael Noda