[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[phoebe ayers]

On 9/12/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> I have just spent some time reviewing the List's archives for the past
> several months, and it is clear something is changing ­ and not for the
> good. The dialogues have become more combative, argumentative and
> downright
> mean. The individual contributions have become more aggressive,
> intolerant,
> patronizing, bullying, insulting, and downright mean. There has been a
> steady decline in fairness, civility and just plain listening.
>
> Also, it appears that the majority of the Members of this List are willing
> to scrutinize anyone or anything but themselves.
>
> What's going on?
>
> Marc Riddell


Did you read through more than just the last few months? There's six years
of archived lists; they make for pretty interesting if headache-inducing
reading. I would be interested in your conclusions based on a year or
three's worth of data. (Of course it's very time-consuming to read archives,
I know!)

Most of what I've seen in the archives is that there are issues that come up
periodically, with never much consensus or a slow shift in how the issues
are argued; and issues that keep coming up but have a drift towards
consensus until something gets done. It's also interesting to note the
various groups of people that crop up, are very active on the lists for a
few months or even years, then go away; versus the few hardy souls that are
still posting and have been here since the beginning. Also interesting are
the brilliant ideas/proposals that you see pop up once in a while that seem
perfectly reasonable, but nothing ever happened with; occasionally an
entirely different, newly enthusiastic person will come up with the same
idea later. There's definitely a rhythm to what issues come up and how that
I haven't really spent enough time with the archives to determine; but the
lists seem to have been pretty argumentative since the beginning all in all,
with presumably a steadily expanding readership, but perhaps not a
proportional increase in posters at any one time.

-- phoebe