On 5/28/07, Josh Gordon <user.jpgordon(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/28/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
And, without the community, there is no encyclopedia.
Yeah, but. To be a dancer takes intense training, years of suffering,
years of sacrifice, a lifetime of committing oneself to difficult
ritual, painful practicing, and putting everything one has on the
line.
To be a contributer to Wikipedia takes the ability to type, hopefully
the ability to read, and an Internet connection.
There's nothing remotely resembling a parallel.
--
--jpgordon ∇∆∇∆
From 8 1/2 years as a dance parent, I have to agree there's not much
comparison between a Wikipedia editor and a dancer, and the closer an editor
gets to being like a dancer, the less useful they are as an editor imo.
This is why many of the obsessive editors burn out, simply they become less
useful as they devote more extreme amounts of time to editing Wikipedia, and
less time to learning anything useful to add to Wikipedia. IMO.
Moral is pretty important, though, to any corporate structure and to
volunteer organizations. That's why corporations pay billions to send
employees on moral boosting working together retreats. The most successful
volunteer organizations are those who manage to let their volunteers know
they are appreciated while keeping the volunteers on track with the
goal--neither of these things include telling established editors that they
are worthless compared to newbie vandals who might some day be conned into
contributing positively (again, in spite of the fact that all who repeat
this mantra can't be bothered to actually ask the newbie vandal to
contribute positively).
Moral is very important--that's common sense.
KP