User:Jayron32/Orthodoxy and heresy at Wikipedia
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
[edit] Essay Abstract
There is a dialectic tension that exists between the Orthodox position of Wikipedia as primarily an encyclopedia and the Heretical position of Wikipedia as primarily a community. It is this tension that is the source of both our greatest conflict and our greatest strength.
[edit] Introduction
Wikipedia is an encyclopedic project with many members. Some people feel this project is the equivalent of a large community, which should focus on the encyclopedia as a primary duty, maintenence and support of the encyclopedia as a secondary duty, and enhancing the community only when the other two duties are being improved by such actions. Others feel the project is a meta-community, with many smaller communities within it's bounds (WikiProjects, WikiPhilosophies, Esperanza, Concordia, etc), and that these subcommunties all serve Wikipedia in their own way and should not be judged save by the contributions they try to make. Certain factions have evolved as a result of the differing views being basically incompatible.
This essay is not about advancing one position over another, or even suggesting the different positions represent everyone involved. It is an attempt to provide a review of the current situation, in a neutral point of view, merely so that all parties can understand where everyone is coming from and to provide a framework of how to answer the question of where we are going.
The choice of terms heresy and orthodoxy in the title of this essay is not to imply that one position is "right" or "superior" or that one is being "persecuted" or viewed as "wrong". It is merely an attempt to show how different factions have developed, one concerned more with the straightforward view that wikipedia is strictly an encyclopedia (the orthodox view) and one concerned with the view that wikipedia is a community (the heretical view). One will probably never find a single editor that conveniently fits into either of these two extremes. However, the dialectical tension between these two views is simultaneously what causes the most conflict in Wikipedia and what makes it so great.
[edit] The "Encyclopedist" Position
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. An editors only job is to create, to edit, and to maintain quality. People should come, with research in hand, to improve articles, provide proper citations, and make appopriate comments on article talk pages as needed to explain their actions. They should act in a manner to ensure the neutrality and verifiability of all articles. The best editors write good NPOV prose, reference everything with appropriate citations, and write extensive comments on talk pages and good edit summaries. Editors should also act to revert dangerous levels of vandalism and remove inaccuracies such as copyvios. Any other actions on Wikipedia largely serve as a distraction from the above process, and good editors do not stray from the above pattern of behavior.
[edit] The "Community Maintenance" Position
Wikipedia is a community edited encyclopedia. Wikipedia has a well developed community of editors who have established relationships with, and opinions of, other editors. As with any community of this size, these relationships and feelings are not always positive. There are bound to be interactions between well meaning editors that are negative for both parties involved. If editors are in frequent conflict with other editors, they may leave and stop editing, which is a loss for Wikipedia. Wikipedia gets more quality edits from more quality editors, so it is in the best interest of Wikipedia to keep these editors around.
[edit] The Middle Ground Position
Wikipedia is a community of communities, here to edit an encyclopedia. There is a developed group of editors, each who have their own specialty, similar to an assembly line. Some like to edit and create. Some like to touch up and format. Some prefer to fight vandalism and other damage, and still others prefer to handle inevitable bureaucratic neccessities with any project this size. There will always be conflicts and misunderstandings, and simple actions taken to rectify this are good, as long as such efforts are not ends to and of themselves. The goal is to create an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, but we are neither emotionless robots fixated on the "goal" nor therapists more concerned with the community than what it produces. Nothing can survive at either extreme, and consensus is finding the middle way.
[edit] The direct source of conflict between these camps
Community maintenance is not article maintenance. Time spent maintaining the community is by necessity time that is not being spent improving articles. The conflict is: Is this time spent beneficial to the project, or is it wasted.
The "encylopedist" position holds that it is wasted. If an article needs fixing, go fix it. Don't spend time trying to make the environment friendly for other editors to maybe come along and fix the article. Making it easier for someone to do the job doesn't mean anyone actually will. If the time spent making editors "feel better" about themselves was actually spent simply improving articles that needed it, there would be more article improvements, and Wikipedia would get better faster.
The "community maintenance" position holds that it is beneficial. It takes a smaller number of editors to keep a large number of editors happy. It is an investment, the spending of capital now to ensure a greater return on the capital later. Sure, time spent making other editors feel better is time not being spent on editing articles, but if one can spend 20 minutes making sure that 10 other editors spend 20 more minutes each improving articles, one has made a return on the initial investment in time, and thus as a whole caused more articles to be improved than had the initial time not been used at all.
The "Middle Ground" people try to reconcile a way to find a solution that satisfies both groups. While recognizing the need for community maintenance activities, they still see that excessive "social networking" is ultimately harmful to the stated goals of the project and thus seek to find a "happy medium" between the two positions, both in their own edits and in dealing with others. Almost every editor will find themselves in this group (much like everyone is middle class). Still, the tension between the two extreme positions can either be divisive or synthetic. It is this camp that seeks to combine the two views for the greater benefit of the project as a whole.
[edit] Community Maintenance not accepted by Encyclopedists
The following groups and activities at wikipedia are purely in line with the community maintenance position above. Some of these may or may not be tacitly accepted by the encyclopedists camp, others are outright rejected:
- Esperanza A group designed to reduce stress and thus make more productive editors. Has been accused of being cliqueish and political
- Kindness Campaign Similar in purpose to Esperenza, though less controversial.
- Concordia A group designed to reduce incivility, and thus make more productive editors
- Barnstars Awards given by wikipedians to other wikipedians for quality work
- Userboxes Improvement of userpages is hardly worthwhile to improving articles...
- Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense Reading other peoples rediculous vandalism doesn't really improve articles either.
- Various discussion pages that veer into the nonsequitur, such as at Village Pump and Reference Desk. Again, people waste time here, and thus don't do much editing.
- Wikifairies and Wikignomes: Adding pictures, and beautifing articles isn't really adding much to them. Find references, write, add prose, etc. is what is really needed here.
[edit] Community Maintenance accepted by Encyclopedists
The following groups or activities are middle ground type events, and are begrudgingly accepted as a necessary evil by the orthodox camp...
- Request for Adminship: The orthodox camp holds that admins are necessary to handle the mundane maintenance tasks associated with keeping Wikipedia in working order, and it should not be an award or promotion merely for being a good editor. Good editors should not edit merely to aspire to be an admin, merely to get the power to block users and delete articles. Really good editors should just continue editing articles. Time spent doing admin work, is of course, time not spent improving articles; though most admin tasks are important as they are directly involved in maintaining the Project as a whole, and not merely existing to make people feel better.
- Various XfD discussions: Again, some articles need to be deleted. Deciding which should be done by community consensus. But editors that spend all of their time debating deletions aren't improving articles.
- Vandal squashing: As Wikipedia has grown in popularity, it has attracted unsavory types who are not really interested in improving it. Some people are here to simply promote their own self interest, or to push a particular point of view, or simply to be disruptive for their own entertainment. The orthodox camp wishes these folks weren't here, and many have left simply because they are tired of dealing with them. Still, as long as they come around, someone has to keep track of them and take care of the problem. Again, time spent hunting vandals is not time spent improving articles.
- Policy debates: Do you have references? Are they reliable? Did you cite them in the article? Then its a good article. Wikipedians spend time debating ad nauseam which articles and subjects are good and bad, developing guidelines and policies to help other wikipedians decide what is good and bad. Again, time spent debating the minutiae of which schools/corporations/people/whatever are worthy of an article is time not spent improving articles. If it can be improved, do it. If it can never be improved, send it for AfD, and find another article to improve.
[edit] Encyclopedist activities
The following actions not only cause articles to be improved, but also leaves your edits largely above reproach and thus avoids conflict in the first place. If everyone did this, the entire conflict resolution beaurocracy at wikipedia would be unneeded. It is that editors DON'T do these things that leads to conflict, and thus all of these problems.
- Find an article that needs improving
- Find references that may help. Do google searches, check books out of the library, get newspapers and magazines together. Always get references BEFORE you edit.
- Using the refereneces, and always citing every change you make with ref tags, begin to add facts to each article. Write from a neutral point of view. Organize the writing into subsections as necessary.
- Make extensive comments on edit summaries every time.
- Make comments on talk pages detailing what you did and why you did it, especially if the changes were substantive. Also read comments of others before you make changes to see who else has tried to improve the article, and what the general direction of the article is.
- Rinse and repeat.
[edit] Conclusions
The Encyclopedist position is an ideal. We are not there. We may never be there, but that does not mean that we do not strive to be these kinds of editors.
The Community Maintenance position is necessary. That should not mean it is unwanted. People are here as volunteers, each with his or her own reason. When these reasons come into conflict, structures must be in place to mediate this conflict. The fact remains that Wikipedia's explosive growth in popularity has provided us with an actual community, and a sizable one at that. People have different levels of experience working in the community, different skills, different reasons for being here. Undesirables have come, factions have developed, and constant community maintenance is needed. Merely wanting it to be different does not make it so.
The third, middle ground position represents the synthesis of the two diametrically opposed positions, in the Hegelian sense. The Thesis position (that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia edited by individual editors) is in tension with the Antithesis position (that it is primarily a community). Rather than see these two extremes as a source of conflict, it is the middle gound that sees the synthesis of these two positions as the source of what makes Wikipedia so great. While conflict does occur, it may help to remind adherants to both extreme positions that ALL serious Wikipedians are here for the betterment of the project, and that it is in the synthesis of these two positions that provides a Gestalt whole, greater than either position is acting alone.
