[WikiEN-l] Wiki philosophy (was: Votes for deletion and due process)

Tue Aug 19 17:59:05 UTC 2003

> > >"unwiki" means very different things to very
> > >different people. To me, personally, "wiki" is
> > >purely a TECHNICAL term, not a philosophy.
> >
> > Wiki is a philosophy, a very radical one in which
> websites are open to
> > contributions by complete strangers. Thus "unwiki"
> is anything which tends
> > to make things less open (like listing articles
> for deletion without
> > providing notice on the article itself).
> 
> That is YOUR assertion. Not everyone agrees with
> you. And furthermore, not 
> everyone who shares your idea that "wiki" is a
> philosophy may agree with your 
> definition of this "philosophy".

I think that wiki is a philosophy, but it is only a
philosophy of complete  imperminance that comes
directly from the unusual development model. In a
wiki, there is no standard procedure, no unnecessary
"due process". If someone wants to rewrite an article,
they rewrite it. If someone else doesn't like it, they
change it. There is no need to discuss everything. If
an anon comes along and blanks 20 pages, it is simply
undone. There is no standard procedure for all of
this, nor is one necessary. If we wanted to ban anon
contributers so this didn't happen, we could, but we
aren't. If someone uploaded pornography to wikipedia
(real porn, not for educational purposes) we'd just
delete it. There'd be no discussion, no boilerplate
picture put there, only helpful and progressive
development, which is, in this case, deletion. I think
the wiki philosophy, or rather lack thereof, is that
you can do whatever you want within the technical
means of the wiki.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com