[WikiEN-l] Stange fetishes

Sat Mar 5 20:27:29 UTC 2005

Michael Becker wikimb at gmail.com wrote:

"Wikipedia is a wiki community foremost and an encyclopedia second."

I'm certain that Michael has the means mixed up with the ends. Just consider 
the role of the person who established Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales. Was his goal 
to create a social club? Based on what I know about him, I doubt it. I've 
only interacted with him by email a handful of times; but apart from finding 
out that he's a nice guy, which has always been my impression, from what 
I've been stumbling across in the media, I've also been learning that he's 
both a good businessman and a probing scholar. Such an individual, I 
suspect, is interested in making an investment in building Wikipedia as an 
encyclopedia, not a social club. Note the thousands of dollars he has poured 
into the project, and all the time he has invested, which likely translates 
into an investment worth many **millions** of dollars, considering the 
opportunity costs-- all the profitable ventures that he could have been 
engaged in instead of investing so much time and energy in Wikipedia. If 
he'd wanted to start a social club, he probably would've made his 
investments much more wisely. Instead of starting Wikipedia, he could have 
(say) patronized some sort of recreational, musical, or sports group. That 
would have required the investment of far fewer resources, and probably 
would've paid off far more in terms of building connections and positive 
media coverage related to his work in other areas. He probably did not chose 
to build a social club because he has another, more lofty end in mind: 
revolutionizing the distribution of knowledge online through an open source, 
free project.

For those who believe that Wikipedia ought to be a social club first and an 
encyclopedia second, perhaps they should find other outlets for 
socialization that are actually fun (and good for making connections). 
Seeing how young Wikipedia's contributors tend to be 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians_by_age, perhaps many of them 
should join fraternities... Don't take this as condescension, just a 
friendly suggestion of something to consider. After all, girls and drinking 
would've interested me far more than editing encyclopedia articles when I 
was their age. BTW, I don't mean to pigeonhold all young editors. Some are 
indeed very well suited for the project, such Ben (Neutrality), Charles 
(Mirv), and Jiang (his real name I don't know or recall)-- among the most, 
if not the most, extremely knowledgeable and prolific young writers working 
for the site. (They are far weightier thinkers than I was at their age; and 
they will likely have gone much further than I have when they are my age.)

I urge the readers of the mailing list not to lose sight of the fact that 
their goal is to write an encyclopedia, not wining plaudits and status in 
the eyes of fellow users for their role in Wikipedia's social hierarchy... 
Wikipedia has thousands of important articles left as stubs or left in 
disarray. The users who've actually donated countless hours out of their own 
time to correct this problem, such as Steve Rubenstein, Jtdirl, and Adam 
Carr (all of whom have violated the 3RR at least once) are correcting this 
problem. They are far more important to the project than the users who 
hardly ever edit the main namespace but rather preach/rant about 3RR 
violations on IRC/mailing list or write 'newspaper' articles about arbcom 
cases. Like the entrepreneur or the worker in the marketplace, they are the 
productive elements of Wikipedia. The productive elements are not 
self-proclaimed guardians of the rules, who are as productive as (say) 
rent-seeking lords in pre-capitalist Europe or these days rent-seeking 
corrupt bureaucrats in governments everywhere. (BTW, this isn't to say that 
some users who make policy don't strike a proper balance between editing and 
policy discussions. Mav, Ambi, Neutrality, Danny, Raul, Ray, among others, 
certainly do. Hence they are the ones capable of making good policies.)

While I no longer have an interest in writing for Wikipedia, I will remain 
an active reader with a strong curiosity in following the growth and 
development of the project. I sincerely hope that it is a success, hence the 
motive behind this plea.

-172

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