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

[The Mangoe]

On 6/26/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I agree; your perception of the Project as organic is much closer to reality
> than my own. Wikipedia is organic: it is living, and it is growing.

"Organic" is a tricky word here, because it tends to imply the
structure that is not there. Assuming you believe in evolution :) you
see real organisms as developing complexity and organization over time
in a way that we don't see here. On one level the project is
self-sustaining, in that people do continue to add articles and edit
whatever may happen. Whether this produces an encyclopedia is at first
entirely beside the point; as long as people are will to participate,
and the website is there and functioning, the basic metabolism of the
project continues.

The thing is that (to continue the analogy) this isn't classic
Darwinian evolution at work; it is a kind of Intelligent Design,
intended to manifest a purpose. All of the problems we are discussing
relate to the perception that this manifestation isn't as effective as
we would like. And to a very great degree, the failures reflect that
this Purpose is not entirely real. In the first place, people come to
WIkipedia with a lot of varied personal purposes. Some are patently at
cross-purposes with anyone's conception of encyclopedia writing, such
as the various true trolls and vandals who simply use it as the
vehicle for their personal entertainment. But other people, through
cultural differences or variation in the quality of their education,
don't see the project of writing in the same terms as an overly
intellectualized, humanized and Westernized college grad such as
myself would. They may not be truly committed to neutrality, or may be
incapable of executing it.

At any rate, the thing is that the Purpose manifested in the actual
work isn't one single Purpose; it is whatever is manifested in the
writing of whoever is editing that particular passage. And since the
thing is far too big for anyone to be everywhere, there is definitely
fragmentation. On top of the that, I get the sense that what organs we
do have seem to have developed particularly to deal with that very
first class of people. They have a definite fire-fighting quality. On
the other hand, the projects seem more geared towards making a
commonality of purpose. But they are by nature localized, so that what
they produce is a Purpose specific to the topic at hand. I'm not
trying to knock the projects, and I don't mean to imply that they are
each and everyone bent on a definite POV. But each one is, by nature,
going to tend to be colored by the commonality of interest.

I don't know about the future of Britannica-style encyclopedia
projects-- though I can see such an encyclopedia using an in-house
wiki as a vehicle for their work. I can see a scenario in which the
determining factor is that Wikipedia is free on-line, and Britannica
is not. Therefore, as long as money is a more important factor, we are
going to tend to drive them out of the market. The only countervailing
factor is quality, but markets are notoriously tolerant of poor
quality. Wikipedia is already "the encyclopedia everyone consults even
though they know it often isn't very good."