On 10/10/2007, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
A number of Wikipedians have pointed out the changes (starting around a year ago) that en-wiki has gone through:
Among others, see:
http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/09/10/two-million-english-wikipedia-artic... http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/06/28/wikipedia-plateau/
http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2007/03/watershed-in-history-of-wikipedi...
http://original-research.blogspot.com/2007/03/is-wikipedia-approaching-barri...
I actually found Robert's conclusions much less surprising than he did (perhaps because he is just back from an extended break, while I and others have been watching this happen for a while).
-Sage
Personally, I would suggest that Wikipedia has indeed become more bureaucratic, and it will progress little further until a rethink of the core ideology is considered, particularly wrt. to how to derive/amend policy, core policy issues, handling bias or concepts of truth, dispute resolution and what to do when there isn't consensus (i.e. no consensus for the status quo, no consensus for proposed or active changes). The whole idea that Wikipedia acts by consensus is a sham. It's not a democracy of course either, it's not even anarchy, or specifically authority-driven (dictatorial). In individual cases it's whatever people can get away with. That's not a good concept of consensus (i.e. "what sticks is there by tacit agreement"); it ignores the fact that rational people will eventually give up rather than deal with bullies and morons.
Zoney