Great place to run a wiki (was: [WikiEN-l] issues)

Wed Jul 21 13:30:20 UTC 2004

As the mailing list admin, I take issue with the charge that "The
mailing list is a terrible place to run a wiki." In my nearly three
years as a Wikipedian, I have found rather that mailing list discussions
tend to be _more_ fruitful than the website talk pages. There are
several reasons for this.

1. Only people who really care a lot about Wikipedia subscribe to the
list. So you get the key players' attention.

2. Discussions cannot get fragmented onto several different and shifting
talk pages. So you _keep_ the key player's attention.

3. Mailing list posts cannot be retracted or altered; they are a
permanent, easily referenced record.

4. There is stricter attention paid to the "no personal remarks" rule
here, so discussions don't descend to the "you're a poopyhead" stage as
quickly as on talk pages. So the discussion stays on topic.

5. Jimbo reads the mailing list. ('nuff said)

6. Finally, we do it because it works. It's a self-perpetuating
tradition, and all major issues have been resolved (or at least first
floated) here.

We've tried to run the wiki on the wiki itself, for routine matters, but
when that breaks down we need a "court of last resort".

Ed Poor
English Wikipedia Mailing List Admin