On Nov 15, 2007 9:09 PM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
http://original-research.blogspot.com/2007/11/wikien-l.html
Others have been saying this and I'm increasingly convinced. Time to write some harsher content rules, then start over with no-one joined until they expressly join.
Thoughts?
I'm all for trying something different. Of the dozen or so lists I actually follow, this one definitely has the worst signal-to-noise ratio.
We can't get away with hot-tubbing[1] here, alas. So I'd suggest we come up with a few different lists, at least some of which are very strict in purpose, with charters ruthlessly enforced.
Off the top of my head, I'd suggest these:
- wikien-interesting: A maximum of few posts a day of interesting things about or on Wikipedia. Heavily moderated, with the assumption that most posts are rejected. It would include interesting press mentions, new research, major activity on the site, or links to especially interesting blog posts about Wikipedia. No discussion, ever. Kinda like a Wikipedia-specific Boing Boing.
- wikien-forum: A heavily moderated (or perhaps better put, curated) discussion list. Slow-paced, thoughtful discussion, limited in volume, and with a strong bias against rejecting rants, windmill-tilting, person-to-person argument, repetition, and points unlikely to lead anywhere interesting, and a mild bias against posts from frequent contributors.
- wikien-open: The relatively open discussion that takes up much of the list now, with a bit more behavior-based moderation.
In some community contexts I'd lean toward something even more open, something like "wikien-open-sewer". But although it would be good to channel that energy away from the main lists, I suspect we're better off letting that happen somewhere else on the Internet.
I could also see a place for some topic-specific lists, but none come to mind right away.
William
I agree, a nice theory. I'd support
Phoenix-wiki