[p2p-research] [P2P Foundation] From Citizendium To Eduzendium

[Tere Vadén]

Henrik Ingo wrote:
> Hi Jon, welcome to the list and for taking this discussion here too:
> 
> On Feb 4, 2008 7:40 AM, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
>> Let me begin with your definition of peer production,
>> even though I remain a little troubled by a nagging
>> sense that some essential element of equality is
>> missing from the mix.
>>
> 
> ...
> 
>> C. What does it say about the level of voluntary contribution
>>    when there is a very high level of involuntary exclusion?
>>
> 
> Just as a side comment to the above: When talking about peer
> production in general, one should not be too keen on seeing any
> equality or egalitarianism in its processes. In fact, the principle of
> "benevolent dictator" and meritocracy explicitly state that some
> leaders of the project will use their own power above other, and those
> leaders are often not elected to their positions in any democratic way
> (and this works very well in Free Software). Exclusion again is a very
> important ingredient to almost any successful Free Software project,
> its users would expect everything but the most high quality
> contributions to be excluded, again nothing wrong there.
> 
> The problem with Wikipedia simply seems to be that a growing number of
> people is disagreeing with the actions of its "leadership", that there
> is exclusionism where there shouldn't be, etc. In fact, Wikipedia
> would probably gain from a more explicit, yet still undemocratic
> leadership. Now it seems that the more stubborn one always wins, this
> is a terrible state of affairs. If a "dictatorship" powers where
> clearly given to a small set of leaders, who wouldn't be acting behind
> pseudonyms, it would be better than the current situation.

The cure to this in F/LOSS is forking. Seems to me this should be soon 
done to Wikipedia; not necessarily changing much of the rules or 
settings, simply just forking. I would love an super-inclusionist fork, 
where only advertisement and spam is deleted.

> 
> Even so, the Citizendium model with more rigid and democratic-like
> governing processes is probably a very healthy step at this point, and
> it may well be that for an encyclopedia project it is the right thing
> to do. (Debian is an example from the Free Software world, where a
> demcoratic governance model clearly is the best fit.)

The advantage of a inclusionist-Wikipedia fork over Citizendium would be 
one of knowledge-production. I agree, Citizendium is probably the model 
for creating a reliable encyclopedia. But an i-Wikip would give a 
possibility to freedoms that might bring about new types of knowledges 
-unpoliced, unauthorised, street-level knowledges. This is what is 
always missing from an encyclopedia, and, sadly, the Wikip has been 
veering to a direction that will miss it, too. The power of a good 
Wikipedia is precisely the fact that there are more artciles on Pokemon 
than on Sociology.

> 
> henrik
> 
> 
> 
> 
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