User:Cecropia/Cecropia rants and mouldy fluff archive 1

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Wikipedia at a [the?] crossroads

Recently a valued editor, 172, has left Wikipedia. He can be abrasive at times, and I have been at political loggerheads with him at other times, but he has represented what I fear is a shrinking commitment to quality at Wikipedia.

What perhaps bothers me more than his leaving (he is an adult, and capable of being responsible for his style, opinions, interaction with the community, and of course, whether he chooses to edit or not) is the recognition that Wikipedia appears to be increasing the power of the majority at the expense of those who think that history is not written by consensus and that Wikipedia's first purpose is to be an encyclopedia, not a club.

On the mailing list, I have seen expressions of "good riddance," and "he violated the sacred three-revert rule." More frightening is the concept that obeying "the rules" is more important than what is being reverted is truth or fiction.

I have great respect for the community; I refer to it often. But I fear that the trend of majority opinion being able to enforce ideology in articles, harass and even ban those who disagree with them will destroy Wiki's tenuous claim at ever being a quotable encyclopedia.

I see a trend at glorifying process over product. As someone who spent decades in publishing, this is the doom of respect for what is supposed to be an NPOV (Jimbo's core non-negotiable principle) encyclopedia. This may be the turning point of Wikipedia's birth, growth, maturation and decline. What a pity if it should decline without ever having fully matured.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I suspect Jimbo, our god-king, watches and doesn't interfere in this not only because he wishes not to impose his considerable influence on the project, but also because, for him, Wikipedia is a sort of experiment in Chaos Theory, and as has been noted about anthropologists, he doesn't want to spoil the social experiment by inserting himself into it too prominently.

Jimbo responded on my talk page:

Hmm, no, I'm not willing in any way to let the social experiment aspects of Wikipedia overtake the goal of a high quality encyclopedia. I'm not very interested in anarchic social experiments, except as secondary to our mission here. Now, this doesn't mean that I am going to start cracking down on every little thing I don't approve of, of course. The community is of crucial importance. But the community -- the real community -- needs to feel confident that I'm saying that quality work is what we're all about, and we don't need to worry about being taken over by trolls. --Jimbo Wales 18:48, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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Archived 6 March 2005

Wikipedia in a nutshell

"Many hands make light work"	"Too many cooks spoil the broth"
"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, but I have bad dreams"

Dr. Strangemoth

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wikipedia

Lately I've decided to stop fretting over political articles and not look at them (much) no less edit them until after the U.S. election. I sometimes break my vow to correct something I think egregious, especially pitching in on the George W. Bush military service controversy. I couldn't resist that one once Rathergate began, since I am in the unusual position of having served in that time frame (thereby familiar with military procedure) and being personally familiar with all the equipment described, due to my typesetting background.

Nevertheless, I am trying to convince myself of what I've been thinking for months now, that editing on contentious articles reduces the overall quality of Wikipedia when there are other things to be done. Whether or not I or anyone else get the last word on whether George Bush spent his National Guard career flying around drunk shouting "wheeeee, I'm a bird," or whether John Kerry got two of his three purple hearts from injuries sustained by being stabbed with a ball-point pen by Jane Fonda, it is not going to affect the outcome of the election one jot or tittle.

So though my edit history has been lean lately, I'm enjoying Wikipedia more, puttering around, doing some admin chores and (Lord love a duck) actually starting a few new articles. I hope I can keep it up. Wish me luck?