User:Getnormality/Empowering Serious Hobbyists

Empowering Serious Hobbyism on Wikipedia: a Proposal and Call to Action

Serious, unpaid hobbyist work has been a driver of human development as essential as it is perennial. From tinkering with stone arrowheads and plant breeding to the Scientific and Computer Revolutions, the individuals who give birth to entire new universes of human endeavor are very often unpaid, passionately serious hobbyists. This is as it must be. When a possibility is beyond the imagination of everyone, perhaps even the person who discovers it, there is little chance that anyone would pay for work towards it. Serious hobbyism is a way to sidestep the resistance of existing professional communities to a new idea or work product. It is a source of deep meaning for many people. It is the side gig route to doing what you love rather than the organic route of changing what you get paid for.

Serious hobbyism exists unnamed in countless places online, from open source coding communities to high-octane special-interest forums on topics such as naturalism and history. If you are now mentally screaming "what about Wikipedia?!" then you and I very much are on the same page. In my not-so-humble opinion, Wikipedia is one of humanity's most magnificent serious hobbyist achievements. For many of us, it has been one of our greatest lifelong friends. It has given us more knowledge and wisdom than the wisest man ever could, sparked more development of skill than the tutoring of the greatest genius polymath. The life-debt that we owe to Wikipedia is more deeply felt than we can express in words.

One way we can pay forward that debt, I propose, is by leveling up our conduct guidelines, which are good, but lacking in a critical respect that most of us may have never contemplated (including myself until very recently). Take in one of the many fantastic guideline pages or explanatory essays. What do these essays all focus on? Almost exclusively article content. There is almost nothing about exemplary discussion between editors. That is where the magic of great article production happens, especially on controversial issues where we may disagree. Our curiosity and rigor in developing content ideas and selecting sources, our integrity in how we treat each other -- these have a huge impact on the vibrance, diversity, and enthusiasm of the community, which cannot fail to greatly affect article content. This likely also applies to the various policy discussion forums which I confess I am less familiar with. Therefore, I believe it is time for us to close this gap by collectively setting discussion page guidelines that help our community continue its upward trajectory as the world's greatest disciplined store of human knowledge.

While we have many conduct policies today, their prescriptions are mostly negative in nature. When we say "be civil", that mostly means "don't be uncivil." Don't edit war, don't sneer and mock, etc. We do not yet paint a complete positive picture of exemplary conduct. We do not yet set out the specific intellectual and social norms of engagement that tend to lead to the best outcomes. If they exist in any form today, I am certain that they lack the public visibility and formal community consensus that article guidelines do. If they did, I would know and use them reverently. I think we all would. My hope is that by bringing such materials into existence, we will inspire one another to be our best selves while editing Wikipedia. We will create something like the world's best sidewalk bicycle repair shop, but distributed worldwide, and devoted to the diligent, conscientious maintenance and expansion of the world's most amazing store of knowledge.

What our new discussion guidelines should look like is not for this author or any one member of the community to decide. Today, I am calling for collaborators who like this idea to build its future by proposing and/or creating proof-of-concept structure and content. I am not a technically expert Wikipedian, and I eagerly solicit ideas for how to structure this endeavor so that everyone will easily see and understand it. I will seed the discussion with my ideas in the sections below, but I am more eager to hear yours.

Please drop me a line on my talk page, whether you are ready to get to work, have general questions or comments, or wish to critique any blind spots in this vision. I believe this endeavor could transform Wikipedia, and that we may end up remembering this day fondly many years from now. But only if we build what needs to be built, starting today.

Finally, we all know that we have sometimes fallen short in our online conduct, and will do so again. I certainly have and will. If you read any of this with a tinge of guilt or inadequacy, understand that we are all in the same boat. But we are much, much more than our mistakes, and perfection is not necessary for greatness. There is no better evidence for that than Wikipedia itself. Let's recommit, today and every day, to our best selves, and make this place what we've always dreamed of.

Thank you so much for reading.