[WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

Thu Jun 8 17:41:46 UTC 2006

Fastfission wrote:

>On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 6/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Wikipedia is a project that thrives only because people want to spend
>>>a ridiculous amount of their time on it. Developing a sense of
>>>personal identity makes people feel comfortable, feel welcome, and
>>>feel invested. As long as said sense of personal identity does not get
>>>in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, I see absolutely no
>>>reason to try and quash it. So far most of the attempts to cut out
>>>"social" aspects seem to have done more harm than good, in my mind.
>>>
>>>I've never seen any plausible evidence that things like userboxes
>>>actually get in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, except
>>>in the sense that trying to eliminate them takes months and creates
>>>all sorts of awful falling-outs.
>>>      
>>>
>>It probably comes down to this:
>>1. Users work mostly on the encyclopaedia, and spend some time socialising
>>2. The social aspect attracts more users, who spend time in equal
>>measure, creating pretty userboxes and expressing their political
>>beliefs
>>3. This attracts more social users, who spend most of their time on
>>purely social functions and creating noise
>>...
>>
>>Eventually you have to draw a line. For serious contributors to have a
>>bit of social fluff about them is fine. Having people whose primary
>>presence at Wikipedia is social, rather than encyclopaedical does
>>eventually get in the way of building an encyclopaedia, through pure
>>noise.
>>    
>>
>
>Social activity on Wikipedia is more than just "socializing", in my
>experience. I spent most of my day-to-day time on Wikipedia either
>reverting vandalism or explaining to people why certain edits are
>better than others. A quick look at my own contributions shows that
>out of the last 50 edits, around 80% were to talk namespaces.
>
>Part of this involved fostering creative collaborations with others,
>getting others on-board with ideas, answering questions, etc. In the
>end all of this does have an effect on article content, but not
>necessarily a direct one.
>
>Wikipedia content is decided by a lot of back-and-forth between users.
>Any time you have lots of communication, disagreement, contestation,
>etc. between human beings you need a lot of social lubricant. You need
>ways to identify others, you need things to put around your head that
>says, "I know about this, I define myself as this, I am a real person
>and not just some name on a screen, and you should treat me that way."
>
>I've nothing against that at all. I don't see any great reason to try
>and root it out. If there are a few freeloaders who are just in it for
>"social" reasons, so be it. As long as they aren't using their
>userspace for anything directly nefarious, then who cares? My time --
>and I assume the time of others -- is better served continuing my own
>business than it is getting into the business of others.
>
>There are always limits to this, of course. There are definite
>mis-uses of Wikipedia resources and I think most people would be able
>to spot them pretty quickly. Copyright infringement on user pages, for
>example, is a pretty straightforward case.
>
>I'm admittedly non-interventionist here. I think it is easier and more
>pragmatic tolerate mild misuse and annoyance than to waste time trying
>to make everyone into ideal Wikipedians. As they say, if it ain't
>(really) broke, don't fix it.
>
>FF
>  
>
People who are here to use Wikipedia as a social gathering place do not 
belong here. The community is a means to the construction of the 
encyclopaedia, not the other way round.

John