[WikiEN-l] Please change your passwords. > Leadership

[David Gerard]

On 12/05/07, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry to sound cynical, but I really think a lot of people are blind to how
> despotic and anarchic things really are on Wikipedia. It's a wonder anyone
> stays involved with Wikipedia for long - obviously we must attract a lot of
> strong-willed and determined individuals as editors.


The typical life cycle of involvement in Wikipedia seems to correspond
with that in most online communities. We're not actually unusual in
this regard.

(And for those who compare Wikipedia to a MMORPG, we also correspond
appallingly well with those.)

I posted the Clay Shirky link already. Nothing that's wrong with
Wikipedia's community is in any way novel whatsoever, and its problems
are not due to malice or gross negligence - they're entirely natural
to social groups, online or off. So here's the Shirky link again,
which I asked the list to comment on before:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html And here's my take
again: http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/05/02/revealed-why-the-community-is-on-crack/

The only way to stop the Wikipedia community's problems is to kill it
off entirely. Disperse it, break it up, reboot it. This may not
actually be a good idea, of course.


- d.