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

[David Gerard]

On 26/06/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> My fundamental question was, is, and will remain: who is actively overseeing
> the day-to-day growth of this organism with the wisdom, judgment, expertise
> and, yes, authority, to keep it in check? Without such active oversight,
> this growth will develop into a jungle - beautiful to observe, but
> impossible to navigate without a very sharp instrument.


The answer, as far as I can tell, is "we're in utterly uncharted
territory here." We're making it up as we go along.

It's like riding a tiger, except it's not a tiger and I'm not really
sure what sort of animal it is or anything much about it.

Yes, this is scary ... I find myself somewhat comforted by the fact
that Wikipedia is in fact free content, so a fork is possible in the
event of the Foundation or the community going completely insane or
melting down.

Mind you, forking and then maintaining a database this size is likely
to be exceedingly difficult. Citizendium started with forking the
whole of en:wp, but quickly decided it really wasn't feasible with the
number of volunteers they had, so decided instead to start mostly
afresh (keeping the Wikipedia articles they'd already been working
on).


> I have asked this question many times on this List, but all I keep getting
> back from some very frequent and usually vocal contributors is either
> evasion or silence.


I hope the above doesn't count as evasion ...


> PS: About a month or so ago, I proposed on this List to change the WP handle
> from "The encyclopedia anyone can edit" to "Wikipedia: The Living
> Encyclopedia". The post got absolutely no responses.


Sorry, I meant to reply to it. I like it as a slogan, and it's very
descriptive of an important thing about us. The amount of community
buy-in that would be needed to effect the change strikes me at first
impression as infeasible, but calling it "a living encyclopedia" is a
useful way to describe this important difference between wiki-based
encyclopedias and how the previous generation (Britannica, Brockhaus
et al) did it with the "get a bunch of smart guys to write it" model.
Because I seriously think no-one will ever start a general
encyclopedia again on that model, and even specialist encyclopedias
written on the "bunch of smart guys" or "one smart guy" haven't a hope
against the wiki model - wikis, and the MediaWiki software in
particular, are a natural for the task of gathering the knowledge of
enthusiasts.


- d.