[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors} - repost

[Ian Woollard]

On 01/02/2011, David Goodman <dggenwp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The attractiveness of Wikipedia is not just that anyone can contribute
> content, but that anyone can help make policy.

You don't seem to live in the same world as other editors.

In most cases attempts to change Wikipedia's policy in reasonable ways
fails because somebody, somewhere will think that virtually any change
could, theoretically, backfire in some nightmare scenario that they
believe in their heart of hearts 100% definitely will transpire, or
because they assume bad faith of the editor, or any number of other
what if looked at closely are fairly weird reasons.

The idea that if bad things did happen as a result of a change; that
they could be reverted as easily as the change to the policy, that
ironically never, ever stops anyone reverting changes to policy.

The normal case where changes are done, and stick, involve some sort
of gang of editors of some description.

The gangs aren't necessarily up to no good, but that's the normal way
it happens.

> --
> David Goodman
>
> DGG at the enWP
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

-- 
-Ian Woollard