[p2p-research] disagreement by deletion/addition

Thu Dec 6 22:35:49 CET 2007

Actually Wikipedia also has a "deletion by suggestion": instead of just
deleting, they have a series of tempaltes that relate to standards that are
constantly evolving, and they park these template "alerts" next to content,
with suggestions about how to improve the content. So, this is 'stigmergic'
signaling. An example is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_B_Hayes#Trivia

I think that "nominations for deletion" are also 'stigmergic' signaling, but
raise more concern for many people, because of the high profile of
Wikipedia. And, because outright removal is less benevolant than suggestions
about improving. Beyond the shadow of a doubt it is good that wikipedia
community sends out signals to remove unwanted and "garbage" content, and
yet, outright deletion should probably have some more layers community
governance, and inclusion of people/bios probably needs more dimensions of
qualification than Wikipedia presently has.

I like the idea of Forking. WikiHive has "forking" built into it. It
encourages "forking" even among non programmers. it's not really forming,
but more of a "noding", with the "node" being recognized as a new wiki in a
(people and technology) connected network. Complexity has not been so hard
to manage, because communities have remained strong and loosely coupled.
Technology contains tools that are made to help admin communities.

I think new evolutions for OddMuse WikiHive  will be:

   - easing the technology available for refactoring discussion in wiki
   - Creating blog like streams of content in the wiki, each with it's
   own feed (kind of like a mix of IRC channels, blog subjects/categories, and
   forum topics, for wikis see
   http://socialsynergyweb.com/cgi-bin/diki/FrontPage) Also, creating
   ways to easily refactor these into pages. Encouraging the use of "Anchor"
   which allows for quick transclusion of wiki "objects" into new pages.
   - (browser detection of language preference for content- currently
   works with inerface :) )
   - More support for import/export of content
   - More support for form creation, so that wiki can also act as content
   management system for people who are not "power" wiki users

This discussion is interesting to me for sure. It's a discussion that I had
with more frequency around 2003 or so, but it's still interesting to
revisit.

On Dec 6, 2007 4:04 PM, Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi> wrote:

> Few more words on deletionism
>
> On Dec 6, 2007 8:46 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Basically, DbD tends to become more desirable for wiki communities that
> are
> > gaining larger "audiences", larger collections of inbound and outbound
> > links, and more usage/activity. When one (openly editable) wiki begins
> to
> > build up lots of links and usage, some of the people invested in the
> wiki,
> > and even new comers might decide they want to control the message
> through
> > deletion, often giving the reason that they don't want to encourage
> certain
> > patterns of usage by making it seem as if their existence is tolerated.
>
> This inspired me to write some comments on lifecycle of a wiki or an
> Open Source project:
>
> The (first) thing that is remarkable about Wikipedia is that it has
> succeeded in creating an encyclopedia that competes with the
> traditional ones (Britannica) and almost with no paid labor to write
> the articles. As was proven by the first unsuccesful Nupedia projects,
> the *only* successful way to do such a project is to go for radical
> openness, which Wikipedia did (you are allowed to write even bad
> articles, no need to register, etc...).
>
> Once Wikipedia becomes more important it is only natural to see a
> shift on focusing more on quality. Not only quality of articles, but
> categorisation etc... Inevitably this will also raise the bar for
> participating, for instance one justifiable way to exclude somebody
> from contributing to Wikipedia is if one contributor writes a really
> bad article (grammar mistakes, etc) and another contributor then
> replaces that with a better text.
>
> This kind of shift happen in Open Source projects too. It is not for
> anybody to get code included in the kernel, apache etc...
>
> So it is good to understand that what has happened with Wikipedia is
> part of a very natural development cycle for any p2p project. What is
> unfortunate is that deletionism is a very idiotic solution to the
> problem. There are multiple better alternatives: I already wrote about
> Editions, or if incorporated within Wikipedia itself they could
> perhaps be created Views, different rating systems (Slashdot, Digg...)
> and so forth.
>
> Common with all these solutions is that everyone is allowed to
> contribute, yet you are not guaranteed to actually be included in the
> subset of some editions of "better quality". The audience on the other
> hand is free to choose between reading a (supposedly) higher quality
> subset of the full Wikipedia, or the full "raw version".
>
> Come to think about it, could it be that Wikipedia suffers from a lack
> of competent programmers? All of the good solutions would require
> technical changes, whereas deletionism is something the administrators
> can have adopted as a policy themselves. Even if I'm sure good
> programmers could be found, if the leading personalities in Wikipedia
> are non-technical "humanists" (as is likely, they are encyclopedia
> editors after all) they might not be able to see these solutions in
> the first place.
>
> **
>
> BTW. Is what I'm writing obvious to anyone, or not?
>
> I feel a bit like Sam, I'm used to spending time with people to whom
> even basic Open Source concepts are amazing, and the situation of
> having peers like you to talk with is kind of new to me.
>
> henrik
> --
> email: henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
> tel:   +358-40-5697354
> www:   www.avoinelama.fi/~hingo <http://www.avoinelama.fi/%7Ehingo>
> book:  www.openlife.cc
>
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>

-- 
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