Can Wikipedia Teach Us All How To Just Get Along?

Ponca City writes "Alexis Madrigal writes in the Atlantic that for all its warts, Wikipedia has been able to retain a generally productive and civil culture. According to Joseph Reagle, who wrote his PhD dissertation on the history and culture of Wikipedia, members of Wikipedia actively work to maintain neutrality, even if that's sometimes nearly impossible. The community has a specific approach to people designed to promote basic civility and consensus decision-making. The number one rule is 'assume good faith,' and the rest of the site's rules are largely extensions of kindergarten etiquette. The idea is that to find consensus, you must see your opponents as people like yourself. Keeping an open perspective on both knowledge claims and other contributors creates an extraordinary collaborative potential, Reagle says. The features of the software help, too. It's easier to be relaxed about newcomers' editing or changes being made when you can hit the revert button and restore what came before. 'Like Wikipedia itself, which seems to tap our natural urge to correct things that we think are wrong, maybe our politics will self-correct,' writes Madrigal. 'Maybe this period of extra nasty divisiveness in politics will push us out of the USENET phase and into a productive period of Wikipedian civility.'"

Re:Say what?

[hedwards]

You're just mad because somebody deleted your entry for not being notable.

No

[falzer]

You're a jerk, a complete arsehole.

How I get along

[Dyinobal]

I mostly get along by not contributing.

Re:Yes

[toastar]

No. And your post is OR.

the neutrality of this post is disputed

Re:No

[Archangel Michael]

[citation needed]

Re:I agree

[hedwards]

Can't get enough of that Derry air?

Re:Oh Please

[bonch]

You just need a bigger injection of Hopenchange(tm).

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a jerk, a complete arsehole.

[citation needed]

Let's get a third opinion and then take it to mediation. After a few weeks I'm sure we can settle on "arsehole whose completeness is still undecided" before someone else comes along, changes it back again, and points out that the mediation doesn't have any binding effect whatsoever.

Re:Say what?

[Hope Thelps]

I posted on a page where I'm sort of an expert in the field

There's the problem right there. Already I can sense violations of:

WP:OR [wikipedia.org]
WP:COI [wikipedia.org]
WP:RANDY [wikipedia.org]
WP:WTF [wikipedia.org]

Enough for an indefinite block and a talk page full of patronising comments. In future please stick to editing articles you know nothing about.

Would you post to Slashdot if you'd read the article? No, of course not. So please show a similar respect for Wikipedia and avoid editing subjects you know anything about.

Re:kindergarten etiquette

[sznupi]

So, is chatroulette the next thing that can teach us all how to just get along? ;)

(actually, could be interesting to check what seeing on Wiki the "other person" would bring...even if in gross way)

Re:Really? I think this is the obligatory answer.

[cinderellamanson]

In common usage there is no difference.

Slashdot, though is different, because it is filled pedantic fucking comedians who often go without sleep, survive on caffeine, live in a basement or garage where they are plugged into the internet 24 fucking hours a fucking day, so the probability of some dickwad inventing a difference and some fuckwad using it on someone approaches certitude the way Captain Kirk approaches FTL or green babes.

Now, back to the article, which i did not fucking read, in which case I would be a dickwad (a fuckwad having read the article), which is about wikipedia. Fuck wikipedia.

here's the heirarchy of social media as I understand it.

We'll start with wikipedia.

wikipedia

This is proof of wiki software as a longterm content management system.

wikipedia
myspace

here we see that wiki software is very good for managing consensus software and myspace is good for managing music, blogs and people.

wikipedia
myspace
twitter
facebook

Phone support and real names. I think I'll label them for now.

wikipedia - ivory tower
myspace - rock concert
twitter - text messages
facebook - phonebook? - with pictures.
youtube - videos

You know what I think would be cool?

nasa - control your very own little robots on mars.

Anyways. Where were we? Oh yea.

slashdot - ???

hmm.

slashdot - basement dweller
slashdot - virgin
slashdot - geek
slashdot - nerd
slashdot - dickwad
slashdot - fuckwad
slashdot - *nix user
slashdot - wait that's it.

Slashdot is basically a Unix user's social networking site.

Wikipedia is a Unix run system.

LOL

[Tom]

I'm not into chat-lingo, but "LOL" seems the only appropriate answer to the question asked in the summary.

If Wikipedia were the model for a society, it would be a strict oligarchy covered in a thin layer of pseudo-democracy. And I mean even thinner than our current so-called democracies where you actually can become a part of the in-group through nothing more than popular support.

It would also be a society hostile to science, dominated by porn on every street corner, and one in which a lot of people and sometimes even places "disappear" suddenly with only a note left behind saying "he wasn't notable" or, in some cases, just "WP:SD". If his wife complains to the authorities, she will find herself tagged "citation needed" and will have to supply several relatives who can vouch that she exists, or she will follow. Strangely, producing a birth certificate will be rejected as "original research".

Also, the official language of the administration, that you need to speak if you want anything from the authorities, will not be the language of the land but a derivative full of strange acrynoms and grammar traps so any bureaucrat who doesn't like you can always find some flaw in whatever you said and reject your request based on formalities.

No, thanks. Even though in many respects our current pseudo-democracies aren't too different, I still prefer them.