The attractiveness of Wikipedia is not just that anyone can contribute content, but that anyone can help make policy. Though it's a little harder to be accepted for this, even newcomers are listened to, especially if they do not trying to do propaganda for promotionalism; it is not necessary to serve a long apprenticeship.
This is the point of open culture as a general way of working: it's open. Of course, it produces inevitable inefficiencies and instabilities, but it has the attraction to new people that they can come and soon affect things. There are more than enough formal organizations in the world for those who prefer their efficiency and stability. There are many informal organizations also. Some, like open software, are in principle open to all, but in practice have extensive technical prerequisites. the uniqueness of Wikipedia is that it is open to even the beginners, and yet produces work of major public usefulness on a par with that produced by formal organizations and experts. And that it accomplishes this on a broad multilingual basis is unmatched by any organization. We have something that has proven successful far beyond any expectations. It puzzles me why anyone would want to risk a fundamental change in its structure. Let it continue as far as relative anarchy can take it. It cannot do everything, or suit everybody. If one wants something different, try other projects. The main thing Wikipedia needs for improvement at this point, is some real competition. The worst thing to happen to Wikipedia these last few years, is that the alternate program at Citizendium did not succeed sufficiently to challenge it. On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 3:47 PM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1 February 2011 20:33, Fred Bauder <fredb...@fairpoint.net> wrote: > >> You propose a political boss. Utterly unacceptable, Napoleonic even. > > > The arbcom are already politicians, elected and all. Wikipedia is a > city of 160,000 people any given month. Politics happens when two > people are in the same room, let alone 160,000. > > > - d. > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
