avoiding forks (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?)

[Stirling Newberry]

On Feb 15, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> NSK said:
>> Have you ever wondered why I rarely edit at Wikipedia?
>> it's  because I know that nobody will know that an article or 
>> paragraph
>> was written  by me.
>
> Good grief, is that what it's all about?
>

In my course of recruiting for wikipedia, this is a statement made by 
several academics. The nature of wikipedia as a "people's encyclopedia" 
stops them.

Now this is a serious question - people will work for free but not for 
nothing - and part of what will help wikipedia grow is finding ways of 
giving people the ability to get "something" for their work, 
particularly in the writing community, that is the body of editors who 
make large contributions. Right now we hand out the ability to POV push 
- which is why we are codependent on poves. Another ability which we 
are about to hand out is the ability to google bomb by pushing your 
favorite sites in links. Fights over these issues are among the most 
personal and stress inducing in wikipedia. It would be better if we 
could "pay" people in some other form, to induce more contributors of 
the kind who write good NPOV articles. We have a currency for people 
who can negotiate compromise - administrator status - but not for 
people who can create articles.

Where I  disagree with NSK is that the required inducement is handing 
out "ownership", simply because the experience of wikibooks - namely 
that it isn't growing quickly - shows that "credit" is only worth 
something when it is attached to something else, like money. Handing 
out ownership stops other editors from working on something, which 
means that the economics moves back to "what a single editor can 
produce". At which point he might as well produce for money. Article 
ownership is the wrong currency to hand out.

However, "credit" of other kinds could given, one which did not attach 
"ownership" to a particular article. Wikipedia should look into ways to 
recognize its creative contributors, without attaching personal credit 
or ownership over articles.