Thomas Beale wrote: > Tim.Churches wrote: > > > > > > > > Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as > > > it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery. > > > > It is wrong to think of wikipedia as an open source/open content > > project. In fact, it is about 1 million separate open source/open > > content projects (that is, articles), each with their own project team. > > All the good projects (articles) have a small "editorial" team, often > > just one person, which really cares about them. If someone else makes a > > worthwhile contribution, it is allowed to stand. If someone else > > degrades the content, then the editorial team changes it back to its > > former state. Often content goes through many cycles of degradation and > > restoration, but the editorial team usually wins through sheer > > doggedness. And the overall, average direction of change across the 1 > > million articles is towards the better, although it is easy to find > > examples of articles which spiral down. But most get better. > > but as far as I know there is not even a signalling mechanism for the > editor (how does she know she's the only one) to know about changes?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Watching_pages > Where is the editorial group proclaimed? I made some additions once and > never ran into any editorial mechanism. There is no proclaimed editorial group - but as I said, most good articles do have at least one person who really cares about the content of the article - often the person who wrote it originally. This "editorial team" is, as I said, self-appointed, unproclaimed and entirely de facto - it exerts influence by persistence and doggedness in correcting what it feels are retrograde changes to each article. And yes, it is not uncommon for there to be multiple "editorial teams" (often just different individuals) at war over an article - hence the conflict resolution procedures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution > > However, if wikipedia articles were not based on the wiki-wiki roll-back > > paradigm, the whole thing would collapse. As it is, the self-appointed > > editorial team for each article can roll back changes with a few clicks > > of the mouse. Self-appointed? Yes, just like the way in which leaders of > > almost all open source software projects are self-appointed. Both OSS > > and wikipedia are meritocracies in which power and position is gained by > > doing things - writing software or writing articles. > > Of course I agree with the sentiment, but I don't see where the > editorial groups are constituted. They are not constituted, they are de facto. Perhaps "team" was the wrong word - more often there are de facto, self-appointed editorial guardians for articles. But quite often these guardians get together to back one another up. And yes, sometimes they fight. Tim C Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
