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RequestforThoughtsonWikipedia 3 - 06 Dec 2011 - Main.DevinMcDougall
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Would anyone be willing to share with me his or her experience editing or creating Wikipedia entries. My first paper argues that Wikipedia's hierarchy and increasingly complex set of rules have exclusionary consequences that detract from its "openness" and "anarchism." If you're interested in helping out, here are a few questions: | | | -- ThomasHou - 05 Dec 2011 | |
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> | I am the proud author of this brief article on Summers v. Earth Island Institute, a case I commented on in my note. Someone came along a few months later and added some category tags to it. | | | | |
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< | Matt, | >
> | Reading your piece, I have the sense that there might be definitional issues involved. I think a point motivating Eben's comments is that anarchism is not necessarily synonymous with a lack of organization. The term anarchy, like privacy, has been used with a very wide range of meanings. In your opening sentences, you equate anarchism with "production without property rights," an association Eben might have made in class at some point (or not, I'm not sure). However, I think the equation is too simplistic. What about a Stalinist society in which there are no property rights? Is this anarchist? I don't think so. | | | | |
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< | Several years ago, I tried to revise an entry on a baseball article. The process went smoothly for me and Wikipedia accepted my revisions. They in fact had no requirements at all. Nonetheless, after some while, I checked back and it seemed that someone else or Wikipedia itself had changed what I had written. The changes were not factually incorrect but detracted a bit from my writing style. I think that led me to just shrug, be glad to have contributed to knowledge online, and ignore it all. I think that having others easily modify what I had written was a slight disincentive from further contributing to Wikipedia. Hope this helps. | >
> | More broadly, I think the "is Wikipedia anarchist"/"what is anarchism" issue cluster is somewhat orthogonal to what I take to be your main point. As I read it, your main interest is more like "has Wikpedia become too bureaucratized/hierarchical to do its job well?" That's a question that can be, in a straightforward manner, tested against evidence. I don't think you need to get into the definitional quagmire of whether it qualifies as anarchist or not.
Instead, I think what you would need to do is define some metrics and apply them. What is that Wikipedia should be doing? How good is it at doing that thing? Is there evidence that "X or Y added procedure" has decreased the ability of Wikipedia to do the things it should be doing?
-- DevinMcDougall - 06 Dec 2011 | | | | |
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< | -- ThomasHou - 05 Dec 2011 | | | |
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