[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and the networked society

[Anthere]

Berto wrote:
>>Do you know someone who works at a multinational volunteer collective?
> 
> Myself. The Dutch Barge Association is organizing the 2009 Black Sea Rally
> (from Ireland to Kiev and back by internal waterways and seas). It's very
> complicated, as it means crossing the Bielorussian border on private boats,
> and passing 200m away from Chernobyl. For the organization we use... a
> closed wiki. Over 200 stubs were needed just to map small needs like gas
> connectors, diesel availability, etc.
> 
> 
>>Find out what they think the
>>parallels are between their organizations or projects and ours.
> 
> 1) DBA has an external goal. Wiki is a means to us. Here the means coincide
> with the end.
> 2) DBA has but 1400 members (some 800 barges, I believe), a clear internal
> hyerarchical structure, periodical mass meetings, a paper magazine. Internet
> is very important to us, but we mostly do our stuff on real water and meet
> in real life. The whole structure was born as a traditional english "user
> group" in the 90's, when a growing number of englishmen started to buy old
> dutch Tjalken and Luxemotors for them to cruise on european inland waters.
> 3) Projects are largely born much in the way they are born here. If anyone
> has enough political ability to collect support for a project, than it will
> eventually become an official thing.
> 4) While we do actively lobby whenever european laws come to touch our
> interests, the only funding we request goes to canal dredging and lock-gates
> maintainance. DBS is fully funded by the 50 quids we pay each every year to
> get our memberships.
> 5) The community is keeping a constant eye on whatever happens, I can hardly
> think of something like META for us. Our village is too small to have
> unknown districts.
> 6) We do have minorities (sailing barges). Yes, I'm into minorities even
> there :) Must be something in my DNA :)
> 7) Vandalizing pages is potentially dangerous for the life of our members
> (all it takes is moving navigational data), so we do not accept anonymous
> contributions. If you are not a member you need a member to grant for you in
> order to be accepted.
> 8) There has been a long discussion before accepting to use a wiki for the
> project. Many people rated wmf as "too chaotic" for them to accept anything
> coming from here. Yet now consensus is that the wiki is useful, and IMHO it
> really is. I forced the decision by setting up the wiki myself and emitting
> the first users. Once it stopped to be a concept and it became "simply a
> tool" all doubts vanished. I expect another major cruising association to
> adopt a closed wiki in the next future.
> 
> Bèrto


Very interesting. Thnaks for sharing that with us. Ant