On 10/25/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I have to agree with a lot of what you have said.
I still use en.wp as a reference (sometimes), but I rarely edit it. My
reason now isn't the same as the one I used to have (busy with other
language wikis), but rather, simply that I find the climate to be too
hostile and too toxic for me to make any real editing progress.
I find this sometimes myself, depending on the topic. It's not so
much that process is bad, but for every ten bits of process there
should be one bit devoted solely to being nice to others and helping
them work out better ways to express themselves, rather than slapping
people down or admonishing them to follow guidelines.
The good admins are getting discouraged and leaving
one by one, and
the bad admins are continuing in their horribleness.
I'm not sure about this; it always seems this way. But some good and
subtle ones are discouraged; and many who are intolerant of criticism
and certain they have the only solutions remain.
en.wp has even gotten to the point where to be a
member of certain
sites critical of Wikipedia is somehow bad, and to be a *sysop* at
them is even a sort of bannable offense (notably Hivemind, Wikitruth,
ED).
Is it a bannable offense? There should be a special award for people
who are effectively critical of Wikipedia.
SJ
On 25/10/06, Walter van Kalken
<walter(a)vankalken.net> wrote:
I have been thinking it over and decided to face
reality. I have lost
all my believe in the wikimediaprojects. So much even that I am now
adding content to places outside of the wikimediaprojects instead of
having to deal with all the 100000000000000's of procedures and rules
being implemented by people who do not even know how to write an article.
The projects have been taken over by a group of people, mostly
teenagers, whom apparently have lost all sight of realism and have taken
other people's work hostage, without creating one bit of content
themselves. Who feel that adding templates, writing rules and policing
(the process) is more important than what we set out to do. Also there
is a very very very strong western bias in the projects. Ideas and
processes are launched which might work perfectly in a western world
(like the rules for verification) but which fall flat on their face when
applied to non-western items. When someone actually rises this point on
the lists (me) it is ignored.
Also Jimbo's statement that en: wikipedia has covered most subjects
disappoints me. This might be true for subjects on developed countries.
But the projects are heavily lacking in the same sort of content with
regards to the developing world. While every lake in the US probably has
an article. Most Asian / African / South American countries have barely
got articles describing these kind of features. And if someone does
write an article about it, it gets deleted as non-encyclopedic. Also
wikipedia's become very nationalistic like the nl: wikipedia where a
fairly large group feels non-Dutch and non-Belgian topics should not be
covered in the Dutch language edition! And they actually wrote rules to
enforce this.
The amount of people who only care about their own backyard (the west)
and wanna delete everything they do not understand has grown to big.
Also other idiocism like on nl: wikipedia where procedure is 100x more
important than the smooth running of the project, resulting in an
everyone can insult everyone situation and no-one get's actually blocked
is taking to much time and stress.
Jimbo invented the wheel with the wikimedia projects. Unfortunately the
wheel never evolved, nor will it in the current climate. Every form of
progress of the projects in something meaningfull and working gets
blocked or grinded in bureaucracy by a group of people who want to be
the boss.
Meanwhile on the boardlevel politicians rule who only give a shit about
themselves and about political games. I have seen many of these games
played out over the years. Also the projects diversify to much and to
much new niches where new small groups start that take their particular
niche hostage (commons being a prime example) are started. Instead of
looking at how things can co-operate people start their own new kingdoms
and fiefdoms (like wikitionaryz, which is GerardM's fiefdom) into things
that are not our core imho. We are about creating content, not spreading
it, let other people do that job.
On some projects I still have moderating bits, I hereby ask the stewards
to take these bits away as I do not wish to spend to much time anymore
on the projects, I might shout a bit from the sideline. The wikimedia
projects will always exist, and the original idea was great.
Unfortunately Winston Churchill was right .... democracy works in theory
only. When the masses take over like on our project, the sum gets
lowered to the level of the masses. Which means herd thinking.
Waerth
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