[WikiEN-l] Creating a monster ... part 17

Fri Dec 9 11:52:00 UTC 2005

I wonder where we are, right now?

A) Wikipedia prominence

If what WP in its collective wisdom decides to do is prima facie news, to 
other media, then we have all the prominence we need for practical purposes. 
A word-of-mouth strategy has worked, basically.  Which web sites can match 
that?  A mere handful, I suppose.

B) Wikipedia integrity

This is a basic, clearly.  We want to think

(i) the data is safe

(ii) the vandals are just contemptible and bounce off

(iii) soft security works because the community is of one mind about making 
it work

(iv) the community is no more factionally riven than the world outside, and 
in fact rather less when it comes to the shared mission

(v) forks are not a big threat to the project.

This is mostly true.  The webcomics fracas surely counts as a genuine 
forking moment, though.  As for

(vi) POV pushing gets shown up for what it is

there is much less room for complacency.

C) Wikipedia standards

I was away while the Siegenthaler thing blew up.  Like other high-profile WP 
issues, it could have been a lot worse.  (Journalists seem to have a model 
of media power that makes them the most reactive, don't they?)  I know from 
my own experience that more and more people are looking themselves up and 
requiring page corrections; which is going to help accuracy, rather than 
hinder.

My own view is that it is always possible to squeeze nonsense out of a given 
set of pages, eventually.  The fact is that there will always be more 
nonsense introduced elsewhere.  We probably do more patrolling of 'orphans', 
'uncategorised pages', and also pages untouched for long periods. 'Churn 
rate' matters

Writing standards - ah, well that's a sore point.  Internet authors are no 
stylists, in general.  Puffing (press-release stuff, academic institutions 
promoting themselves) seems to be more of an issue than straight spam.

D) Community and frictions

If not us, who? I don't know whether the average Wikipedian is any more 
foolish or anti-social than in the past (weighted average over 
contributions).  Younger, if I'm any judge.  Civility seems to be taking 
something of a battering, except between those who know each other where it 
is pretty good.  The problems appear principally to be about scaling, but 
the pessimist versions of 'laws' on scaling are I think refuted by the daily 
advance of the content on the site.

I feel this is where clear sight is most needed, right now.  Do the 
partially-broken things need the radical fix or the tweak?  The trouble with 
assenting to the radical solution is that it smacks of subjective burnout. 
There have always been the 'dark side' issues: the trolls, know-nothing and 
slasher and frivolous editors, those who really can't leave their agenda at 
the door.  The history of the site actually shows that they can inflict 
damage, but that's about it.  This appears to be a time to point to WP's 
resilience, and also the _patient_ way successful innovation has been taking 
place.  The good physician needs to have a six-month time scale, rather than 
six days; and so should we.

E) Wikipedia hardware

Aaagh!  Ouch!  That stings!

Charles