[WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

Thu Jul 21 00:34:55 UTC 2005

Wikipedia's Achilles heel was inevitably going to be
its size, and the unwieldiness of managing or guiding
large group trends. If you think about any society in
general, its continuity is dependent on the
establishement of ritual behaviours. Wikipedia's core
principles are for the most part exactly what should
be, but Ive been concerned that we lack rituals for
indoctrinating people into a sense of our community
goals and nature. 

Indoctrination? Yea--if people feel like a mere
number,(relative to others I suppose), then only those
with the a healthy and egotistical presumptuousness
will tend to be assertive, and gain for their online
persona. The purpose of encyclopediasm and community
are not entirely in sync --community requires
personality, which can be obstructive to the goal of
being NPOV and detached. 

So, (more smoke out of... (MSOOMA)) if conceptual
continuity is based upon outdated modalities of
community, then that may (conceptually) validate the
worries that of the community growing thinner as it
grows larger. Certainly its worrisome to think that
good articles today can be turned into porridge by a
slew of new, dissassociated editors, but that's
perhaps where "Wikifaith" comes in, I suppose. 

The general idea, back in the day, was that as
problems grow, the community must restructure to
answer them. Disputes gotten too big for JW and the
mailing lists?--empower a committee to deal with this,
and another to deal with that. The point is that these
committees are more than just bantha fodder--they
represent community structure, which is just as
important as software structure, or NPO structure. If
were not responsive in terms of community structure...
<i>aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again.  Wal, uh hope
you folks enjoyed yourselves. Catch ya further on down
the trail.</i>

SV

--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >From: Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>
> >
> >I must say that I think that everyone who does not
> respond to a (good
> >faith) questioning comment asking them why should
> have their
> >vote/opinion on the matter disregarded. If they are
> not willing to say
> >why they believe what they do then they should not
> be considered
> >contributing to the discussion. Wikipedia is
> rightfully not a democracy
> >where you can vote for whatever reason you like.
> Any position someone
> >takes must be able to be challenged.
> 
> Well, speaking personally, I've probably voted in
> support of 3 dozen RFAs, 
> and only voted against 3 applications, each time
> listing my reasons.  In 
> each case I was challenged, sometimes in a most rude
> way, for more detail.  
> When I provided it, giving links to examples of
> policy violations etc.,  I 
> was attacked again.  Those who did not give reasons 
> for rejecting the 
> applications were not subject to these violations of
> [[Wikipedia:Civility]] 
> policy.  It would be most tempting, in the future,
> to simply vote "No" and 
> refuse to give a reason, in order to avoid this kind
> of unpleasant 
> treatment.
> 
> Jay.
> 
> 
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> 

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