[Wikipedia-l] Proposed fork of Wikipedia

[Marc Riddell]

> Maury Markowitz wrote:
>> Well color me sceptical. Many of the problems you mention on the web page
>> seem inherant to any large group of humans. I don't see how changing the
>> rules can, of itself, address the fact that we all have opinions and we all
>> consider them to be important. As this appears to be a major concern of the
>> proposal, let me address this directly...
>> 
>> "Pleasantness and respectfulness will be effectively enforced on Wikipendium"
>> 
>> The concepts of "pleasantness" and "respectfulness" are very much open to
>> interpretation - and thus opinion. How are we to decide if a comment is
>> simply a poke-in-the-ribs for fun, or a seriously nasty note? This is often
>> difficult in "real life", let alone the limited bandwidth of a text based
>> media.
>> 
>> Perhaps it's just me, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that there
>> can be a set of rules that can address this. Instead, it seems that a
>> flexible case-by-case basis with many viewpoints is the only way to ensure
>> that one person's view, the "constables" as you call them, doesn't become
>> overarching. I believe the system on the Wikipedia had demonstrated itself to
>> be workable beyond my own belief.
>> 
>> A word of advice: I had a friend who ran a very successful MUD about a decade
>> ago. It was created out of the ashes of another MUD with rules very much like
>> what you are proposing. This first attempt died a hasty death. Their second
>> attempt was a free-for-all with self-policing by the members. It ran for
>> years.
>> 
>> I don't want to sound like a downer, but in my limited experience, more rules
>> generally makes things worse, not better. Generally the rules themselves
>> become the points of argument. You can certainly see this on the Wikipedia,
>> and I have argued on several occasions for re-writing some of them to be
>> based more on common sense and less on the letter of the law.

on 7/4/08 1:03 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

> I very much agree with this analysis.  It is hard to conceive that a
> saviour will come along and lead the true-believers to the promised
> land.  They will be lucky to find that peace in the promised land lasts
> as long as five minutes.  The underlying ideals are a common thread in
> many such religious or political movements.  Most of these devolve into
> either tyranny or ineffectuality.
> 
> Rule-making too often dwells on the relatively rare extreme cases.
> Devoting our efforts constructively to what kind of a project we want is
> a lot more fruitful than wasting a lot of time arguing about what to do
> with the occasional saboteur.  It's easy for the builder to see these
> detailed rules as a threat to fundamental freedoms.  It is too easy for
> these rules to be trotted out in situations that were not imagined when
> they were written.
> 
> Ec
> 
What would be required then, Ray, would be a whole new, fresh and very
creative approach. Besides, for us here in the Colonies, this is our
Independence Day! :-).

Marc