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

[Zoney]

On 13/05/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 13/05/07, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Amazingly, on Wikipedia they aren't. Various areas are not only one or
> the
> > other, but seem to switch between the two depending on whether a group
> of
> > people or an individual have the upper hand there, or a lot of people
> are
> > trying to get the upper hand on the others.
>
>
> A question: is Wikipedia the first online community you've been deeply
> involved in?
>
> (Not that this is a bad thing on your part, I'm just asking. I suspect
> that this being the case for a lot of people is a lot of the
> perception of the problem. I just find myself repeatedly surprised at
> people talking about Wikipedia's problems as if they're novel in any
> way.)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
I say "amazing" because these problems should have been headed off far
earlier on in this project, because it is a serious endeavour.

Wikipedia is not a discussion forum, MMORPG, fan club or indeed primarily a
community at all. It should not be run the same way as those, allowing the
same problems. More particularly, it should be "run", not expected to
magically "work". I think the latter is a rather flawed ideology, although
unfortunately it seems many on Wikipedia subscribe to it (e.g. "the more
people involved with an article the better it gets", "we keep getting more
people therefore the articles will get better"). We don't even have
consistent editorial standards as a result of this organisational strategy,
which seems to be some bizarre belief in a magical "evolution" of
management. I think the "Wikipedia:" pages put the lie to this working.

Essentially, the "wiki" technology is fantastic for collaborative editing,
but I think people have got carried away with it and erroneously belief that
the evolution of content through such collaboration is a paradigm that can
be extended to the management of the project.

Zoney

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