[WikiEN-l] A thought on community dynamics

[Marc Riddell]

on 10/8/07 10:52 AM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:

> http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_09_05_a_bakeoff.html

> Gladwell's thesis is that although open source projects, which we can
> probably loosely define to include ourselves, bring together great
> expertise, but also create significant friction between the members of what
> we call "the community".

To study this properly we need to more closely define "the community" as it
relates to the Wikipedia Project.

 <snip>

> The question is: have we on Wikipedia reached a point where our community is
> too big that the negative friction overwhelms the positive value of our
> expertise?

In this case size does not matter when considering the negative friction.
What does matter is the individual contributor's ability to interact in a
constructive way with another contributor. You can have a group of a
thousand persons, and, if each of these persons has the positive
interpersonal skills to communicate with another, much can be accomplished.
On the other hand, you can have a group of ten where the majority of them
don't play well with others - and you will have a gridlock disaster.

The problems are not with the Community, but with the individual members who
make up that community.

Marc Riddell