[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Improving dialogue between editors and "tech people"

[Michael Snow]

On 10/26/2012 1:49 PM, JP Béland wrote:
> I read a while back something saying that no article on Wikipedia
> belongs to anybody, meaning that despite how much you contributed to
> it, anybody else is also "entitled" (for lack of a better term) to
> modify it and contribute to it. I would like to see that "policy" or
> "way of seeing things" expanded to the Wikis themselves. When reading
> things like "my wiki", it seems like we are incorporating a sense of
> "possession" in the way we see things. I mean, after all, Wikipedia
> really belong to its readers, not its contributors anyway. I guess
> it's more rhetoric than anything...
That's true, but it deals with a separate problem. When we say that 
nobody owns a Wikipedia article, it's because people may be doing things 
to take possession of it (editing), but we all must be willing to share 
ownership with everyone else. In the context of encouraging dialogue 
between groups that rarely interact, the issue is not that too many 
people are claiming ownership, but that nobody is. These people may have 
the same ideals, but it's asking them to occupy a new and unfamiliar 
workspace that they may not have the time or attention for. It's the 
difference between a toy that all the children want to play with (and 
end up fighting over), and the lonely and neglected toy in the corner 
that none of them show any interest in.

--Michael Snow