[WikiEN-l] Rollback, and now here comes instruction creep

[John Lee]

On Jan 14, 2008 7:01 PM, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On Jan 14, 2008 6:21 PM, Majorly <axel9891 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> Nothing on Wikipedia comes without some sort of dispute and process :)
> >
> > That is untrue, and it would be a huge sign of failure if it were true.
>
> See, this is a perfect example of culture clash.
>
> Greg describes the old-guard view, the way things were when
> Wikipedia was young and on its way from zero to one million
> articles, the way things should (we wish, we wish) still be.
>
> Alex, on the other hand, is pointing out the way things
> apparently *are* in today's brave new Wikipedia.
>
> Today's brave new Wikipedia, of course, is the one in which the
> vast majority of editors -- and admins -- weren't around during
> those halcyon old days and would probably be regarded by the old
> guard as ignorant newbies at best, and renegade idiots at worst.
> But whether we like it or not, they're running the asylum now,
> except when they're reacting badly to the old guard cabal's
> increasingly ham-handed attempts to reassert control.

How true. I have long given up attempts to change things; it's simply
not worth the effort. People are drawn to shiny meaningless brownie
points and shows of process; men are governed by baubles, to badly
paraphrase Napoleon. We could counteract this urge as a small
community, but as we've grown larger, it's become simply physically
impossible.

Of course, the cost of this greater complexity is the alienation of
the old guard, which made substantial contributions in an era when
less silly people dominated the project. As I have removed myself from
the trifles of the new guard, so have I largely removed myself from
everyday editing and participation in the project. But the project
goes on; it lives in spite of us leaving.

I see no reason to complain too much about this development. It's
completely pointless to have all this red tape springing up, and a lot
of the things we have now would neither be around nor necessary if we
had wiser and/or more sensible people dominating the project and its
discourse - this is true. But I think there is no way that we are
choosing between the present outcome and an ideal outcome of minimal
bureaucracy. There is no way to return to the good old days (which
some people hasten to point out might not have been so good); I'm not
happy about the status quo, but because there's no way to fix it, I
see no purpose in complaining too much.

Johnleemk