[WikiEN-l] How to bring back people who don't want to bother?

Thu Jan 12 05:17:31 UTC 2006

Michal Snow wrote:
> uninvented at nerstrand.net wrote:
>>
>>The reasons for this have to do with the size of the contributor base,
>>the fact of the developers not being accountable to the community, and
>>the presence of many contributors who are perhaps excellent writers and
>>editors but who lack skills and experience in group decisionmaking.
>
>
>I agree in part, although developer work has little direct bearing on 
>some of the changes that could be discussed.

One of the things we've never really done much is discussed possible
technical solutions to some of the community governance issues.  The
addition of categories and templates had a big, positive effect on
community and on the project as a whole but the decisions about how
these features would be used were made after they became available. 
Even minor features can change the community considerably -- look at
how the availability of Kate's tool has changed the spirit of RFA, for
example.

So we've never had a discussion, for example, of what we could do about
deletion if we had the technical capability to implement it in a
totally different way.  

Michal Snow wrote:
> [many other excellent points with an analogy to mining towns]

I agree wholeheartedly with Michael's other conclusions.