[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 3:51 PM, Thomas Dalton<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/8/11 Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>:
>> Thank you, Thomas, you just made my point. This is exactly the type of focus
>> and denial I was speaking of.
>
> I'm not denying we have a problem with civility. I got desysopped for
> a civility block the community and ArbCom objected to. What I'm
> denying is that this problem is going to lead it disaster. There is
> absolutely no evidence of that.


I think there is a significant structural risk in the community
steadily getting less welcome to new blood.

A. People burn out, we need new recruits on an average roughly 18
month cycle just to maintain a participation level.
B. The more insular and inwards looking we become the less likely we
are to see structural problems, both internal and external.
C. We are (still) missing diversity of coverage due to a focus of our
userbase in certain demographics.  I found a few days ago that one of
the most commonly found light mechanical / structural construction
materials used in modern first world construction had no article
(strut channel / unistrut).  I keep tripping over this sort of stuff
every time I turn around.  3 million articles minus epsilon is not
done by any means.
D. And a narrow standard worldview in some respects is not good for
community consensus building, if we want the encyclopedia to be
representative of the world around us that we're writing about.

The "Well, it's getting worse, but it's always been getting worse"
misses the point - we're useful and relevant because we meet certain
criteria for our user base.  This sort of stuff strikes out at our
usefulness and relevance to our userbase, not just internal problems.
If people see us as an insular, crazy bunch of encyclopedia nuts
rather than as a genuine open movement that's important to them and
society writ large, we lose everything.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com