User:Bielle/Is This the Future?

Off with Their Heads: A Purely Personal View

Some Thoughts on a Process

Now the fun at Wikipedia is about to be over. We have to grow up now, be serious, be governed. That’s the goal Giano and friends seem to be working towards here. In RDH’s Preamble to the proposed, new Constitution, he writes:

Many of the policies, institutions and practices which served Wikipedia well in its early days, are now inadequate due to to its rapid growth, massive size and increasing complexity.

It is therefore necessary to adopt a more formal and centralize governing document which more clearly outlines how Wikipedia should be governed in order for it to better archive its goals, realize its true potential and serve its readers.

Errors aside, this remains a chilling proposal, far removed from the original simplicity of “the encyclopedia anyone can edit”. Unless readers and editors spend time at such unlovely venues as WP:AN/I, WP:ARBCOM and WP:RFA or even reviewing the historical archives of the likes of Jimbo, or of any of the active Admins, they would not know that conflicts at Wikipedia are not only about vandals or disputed content. Indeed, some of the greatest drama has been over “civility”, a poorly defined and even more poorly monitored, concept about which there is as much agreement as one would expect across multiple cultures, social styles and chronological ages; in another word, none.

When those chastised with “incivility”, with or without the internal link for purposes of judicial weight, are minor players, single-purpose accounts, IPs, vandals, sock- and meat-puppets, the flurries of self-satisfied verbiage are thankfully brief, and those involved get on to more important activities. Ah, but when the deemed rude are important contributors of content or, horrors, also Admins, then the marathons start.

If the number of words expended had a direct relationship to a topic’s importance, then indeed, would a new Constitution be the logical consequence of any one of a number of civility debates. For that is what has precipitated this particular proposal: an argument over whether (a) “miserable little shit” is uncivil and (b) if it is uncivil, is that important and (c) is it a block-worthy offence when committed by an Admin. Oh, there is lots more history, of course; nothing on Wikipedia is ever simple, except “the encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.

The number of contributors who have been adversely affected by the inconsistent and oft-times almost random application of "civility blocks" is nowhere near commensurate with the volume (in either sense) of their objections. Even where these revolutionaries are significant contributors, and many of them are, changing the whole of the way Wikipedia works, and it does work, if perhaps sometimes even in spite of itself, is not just "baby with the bath water" but with all the project's infrastructure as well.

There Is Another Place

What is wrong with Citizendium, folks? Experts are welcomed with open arms, their words protected and no bumbling incompetent need ever cross their horizon. With no need to deal with the unschooled, there would be no provocation to type the harsh word, coarse epithet or scornful phrase. And those who will take the inconsistency, the drama and the mistakes in order to preserve the fun can keep on keeping on.

What's wrong with Citizendium is that it isn't Wikipedia. It doesn't have the profile, the recognition, the traffic or the energy. For all the complaints about the level of drama on Wikipedia, the notably quiet and scholarly world of Citizendium, which seems to have all that an expert could want, is not attracting the minds and words of all but a few of Wikipedia's most prolific experienced and knowledgeable editors.

One of the most important things I have learned about relationships, and this applies between individuals and between groups, is that if you change any one aspect of a person or a group, you imperil the whole. If you want your partner to be less accepting of other's failings, for example, your certainty is that she/he becomes less accepting of yours. If you corral a group of leaders and set out the rules by which they will behave, then your certainly is that corralling and rules become the raison d'etre of the rest of the group.

It is not, I think, the experts or the Good Articles that give Wikipedia its profile or its energy, though they do provide much of what degree of credibility the contents have. It is the sheer exuberance of "anyone can edit", the phenomenal volume of words and of topics, and the hordes of involved individuals, only the smallest percentage of whom has expertise. Wikipedia may be ungovernable in any usual sense of the word, and that may be its attraction and its strength.

The only people who are in favour of more government are those who expect to be among the governors, or at least expect to be treated as if they were. "Better government" is the usual phrase, though I have yet to see a proposal for "better" that also meant "less". For the governed, who are the multitude of Wikipedians, neither the idea nor the fact will be attractive.