Perhaps it's more of a misunderstanding that this is still a wiki above anything else - in particular, those understandings that literally anyone else you write, and you can edit anything anybody else writes.
I believe those who have a good understanding of those two fundamental wiki concepts tend to do better in a wiki environment (not just Wikipedia) than most others who do not. But this is coming from a person who specializes in building up already-existing articles over trying to create brand new articles from scratch. -MuZemike On 10/11/2010 1:51 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote: > On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Ryan Delaney<ryan.dela...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Now here's the interesting point: >> >> "High value participants are treated as special because they have >> recognition& reputation from the community. But, as the community >> scales, these social mechanisms break down and often, if nothing is >> done to replace them, high value members get especially miffed at the >> loss of special recognition and this accelerates the Evaporative >> Cooling." >> >> We have the reverse problem on Wikipedia, where visibility and >> reputation allows some editors to get away with behavior that we >> otherwise wouldn't tolerate. John Locke called this kind of reputation >> 'prerogative' -- it's now become a technical term in political >> science, but it basically means that when we notice someone making >> decisions that everyone else goes along with, we start to 'go with the >> flow' and accept that person's authority in future cases as well. It's >> a kind of momentum building of social power, and since it's the only >> real power anyone has on Wikipedia, it is very significant - and >> vulnerable to abuse. Where a contributor known to make lots of >> valuable contributions in other areas suddenly demonstrates insanity >> on a specific topic, people will tend to give way where they wouldn't >> if it were coming from someone they didn't know or view as a 'valued >> contributor'. The result is the 'evaporative cooling' of those who >> don't have that social power on Wikipedia, or less of it, but whose >> edits are no less valuable - if only less voluminous. > > Arguably we have the reverse of your reverse problem. > > What is the ultimate status-lowering action which one can do to an > editor, short of actually banning or blocking them? Deleting their > articles. > > In a particular subject area, who is most likely to work on obscurer > articles? The experts and high-value editors - they have the > resources, they have the interest, they have the competency. Anyone > who grew up in America post-1980 can work on [[Darth Vader]]; many > fewer can work on [[Grand Admiral Thrawn]]. Anyone can work on > [[Basho]]; few can work on [[Fujiwara no Teika]]. > > What has Wikipedia been most likely to delete in its shift deletionist > over the years? Those obscurer articles. > > The proof is in the pudding: all the high-value/status Star Wars > editors have decamped for somewhere they are valued; all the > high-value/status Star Trek editors, the Lost editors... the list goes > on. They left for a community that respected them and their work more; > these specific examples are striking because the editors had to *make* > a community, but one should not suppose such departures are limited to > fiction-related articles. > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
