Marc Riddell wrote: > Two words in > your message state what is the main, insidious problem with the Project's > culture: "It varies." To be fully productive, to reach its greatest > potential and to achieve its stated goals a workplace's culture cannot vary. > That seems to be twaddle. I work, largely, on mathematics, poetry and history. There is no obvious homogeneity in the people I meet; there are no obvious shared assumptions. The English Wikipedia draws on a particularly diverse population (many speaking English as a second language). It's not "insidious" that wikis don't select who works on them or how they work. It's part of the idea - a highly successful idea in our case - that the barriers to entry should be low. You'd get a more predictable culture if you said Ph.D.s and native speakers of English only. And no teenagers, ever. I had a talk page message four days ago starting "That is just silly" and ending "Be serious". Lack of shared assumptions, in this case about a navigational template, is something I feel I ought to be able to rise above. > To work, to create, at their full potential, a person must be able to focus > on that: the work. They cannot be constantly looking over their shoulder, or > live with the anxiety that an unstable, unpredictable workplace can produce. > > And the old party-liners - those who have "led" by insinuation and not > consensus - can blow all the smoke they want at the messengers, but the > message is still there loud an clear. > I think you'll find a more informed, and, yes, more nuanced discussion going on in parts of this thread not dominated by generalities.
Charles _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
