[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this* project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around For A While)

[Stirling Newberry]

On Feb 5, 2005, at 7:24 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:
>
>> I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert
>> McHenry's criticism.  They are correct as long as they describe the
>> problem they see.  However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism
>> doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the
>> community.  And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to
>> "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution.  He
>> suggests a fork of the project.  Yes, maybe he should try this.
>
>
> He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted 
> to
> change *this* project's working methods.
>

Given how wikipedia is structured, anyone with the server power can 
fork anytime they are willing to sponge down the material. And as for 
anti-elitism, it is has POVs too, often notable and documentable, and 
which should be present.

A great deal of the thrash on this issue is because in Wikipedia one 
can "look inside the sausage factory" and see the infighting and 
arguing that goes on. One can't see this in academia. Imagine if every 
academic journal had a section after each article of all of the drama 
processing that went into the paper - academia wouldn't quite look as 
shiny. Or do we need to bring up Charles Van Doren's role in the 21 
scandal back in the 20th century?

The truth of much of Larry's criticism is that it is annoying for 
someone who knows the material to have to fight with people who don't, 
and wikipedia's rules are not currently structured for the impatient 
academic, who views the world as he glides into class, dumps his POV, 
and obliterates poor dissenting undergraduates with withering 
objections and a few points off on class participation. In fact, even 
fairly patient people have levels of "wikistress" which are probably 
higher than is sustainable.

Improvements do need to be made, many of our mechanisms are not well 
implemented and are frustrating to deal with. We still need to 
integrate citations into our text in a more thoroughly wiki manner (and 
here I will insert a crass plug for getting more people involved with 
wikicite which would do just that), we do need to improve how we handle 
disputes, and we do need to improve a host of other details.

Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of the 
kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the mechanism of 
participatory dialectic that has produced more than most people would 
have thought possible in a very short time.