WikiLifeCycle/Talk

BrianCorr -- Sat Apr 17 15:04:15 2021

I was looking through OLD email and I found this in something I wrote about WikiPedia in 2004 as we were grappling with using voting for decisionmaking: "So I am still ruminating about what I think is the best way for Wikipedia to function, because it is difficult to pin down *only one way* -- or even two or three that Wikipedia approaches decisions and conflicts, and therefore come to a conclusion about the best way to decide things. It seems that people prefer to have rules -- or at least to have guidelines -- to decide what is acceptable and unacceptable (I do as well). However, this is a positive feedback loop for those people (who will make more and more rules), and but will also drive away people with other focuses or personality types in a negative feedback loop (see <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points/>;). But as the project continues to increase in size and scope, and as more types of people join, it is not as clear what is the best way to proceed.

Primarily, I think that we need to think about the concept of voting and how it affects group processes. Wikipedia is an unusual hybrid of Wiki, NPOV, *and* altruistic self-interest (i.e., we all get some satisfaction from what we do here, but we also do it for the good of the project/community/world). I also think we need to look at how our decision-making processes affect how much we are open or closed -- we can be "open" to everybody, but if only one type of person can handle being a contributor or editor, what does that really mean for us."