[Wikipedia-l] Certification

Sat Nov 2 18:02:35 UTC 2002

At 8:03 AM -0800 11/1/02, Larry Sanger wrote:
>Maybe!  It *might* also suggest to readers familiar with Everything2 and
>Kuro5hin and other projects that are self-evaluating, that the project is
>essentially a self-contained community, interested in impressing itself
>and not really interested in meeting independent standards.

I'm not familiar with those other sites. I'm not interested in 
self-contained communities. I am a stranger who has stumbled across 
the wiki site and is interested in the idea of it. It appears to be a 
idea with rich potential and noble ideals... abstract attractions 
perhaps.

As an "outsider" I now have the nerve/conceit/guile to express my POV 
and interact on the list.

What am I now that I interact? An insider or an outsider?

What If I continue to interact? Do I become more of an insider or 
more of an outsider?

By the nature of the technology and the setup, there is no boundary 
or container and anyone can interact - both positively and negatively.

Yet there is a community, so what binds it and how is it joined and left?

On the one hand you despair of vandalism and yet on the other you 
despair of getting informed input.

How do you attract the "right" people and dissuade the "wrong" people 
from interacting?

Who should manage/own/weild that distinction of right and wrong?

The words "community" and "consensus" come to mind, but how to 
articulate them in a living interaction?

Because it is boundary-less, you as a community don't have powers of 
exclusion, so the only way I can think of attracting the right kind 
of people is by "resonance": Resonance is the phenomenon of inducing 
similar activity in others (e.g. other tuning forks). Whatever you do 
will attract people who resonate with that activity.

The implication here is you get where you want to be by embodying the 
activities and principles you hold and not feeding (i.e. reacting to) 
those of different POVs.

If this is done consistently the result is a collection of 
like-minded people all in resonance and aligned to a shared purpose, 
while the "others" have lost interest and taken themselves elsewhere 
to find their own resonances.

If you're attracting riff-raff and having editorial battles the 
implication is that the riff-raff are in resonance with some people 
in the community who like creating drama.

If this is the case the most productive thing to do is examine the 
motives and goals of each "member" and try to align them better.... 
that or accept that the present state is what "members" choose - 
consciously or unconsciously.

Why are you involved in the Wiki project?