Archive for August, 2007
Restoring sanity to the masses
It seems my recent reminiscence is shared by a friend David Gerard, who pointed me in turn at Clay Shirky, one of Wikimedia’s advisory board members. As David claims he was, I was mentally nodding as I read through, as the patterns that are described for online communities are ones that I think I have been subconciously noting for some time, as I’m sure many have. However, the theme seems to be that things need to be done before a community is set up in order to avoid problems later on. While Jimmy probably envisioned that a community would arise surrounding the encyclopedia project, it seems unlikely that he and his fellow starters would give it much thought as that was not what they were aiming for. If only Shirky’s essay had been written a little earlier, people might start to notice the tell-tale signs of things going wrong before they got to the point of no return. While Wikipedia trundles on and will probably keep doing so in its current form, it could be so much better if we were to sort out a lot of the problems that the community faces. But either people are powerless to do so (and likely don’t know what to do either, like me), or those who do have that power haven’t got a clue what to do about it, however much they want to.
In the comments following his post David seems to think that the best thing to do is to put the developers in charge as an ultimate authority (something we don’t really have at the moment). He claims they already have a great deal of power anyway. While those who administrate our servers will always have the ability to “pull-the-plug”, for some it will cost them their jobs and really, we are not going to have a developer revolution. Yes, we depend on software to keep us going, and yes the developers control the code and the implementation of it, and yes they have a well-established cabal like the rest of us. But I don’t think an automatic shoulder-load of power to them makes sense because a good coder does not necessarily equal a good leader. Don’t get me wrong here, I have great respect for the devs and what they do (you have to be a really good coder or sysadmin to navigate the mess of our servers, apparently) but at the same time you can’t be good at everything at once, generally speaking. A technocracy isn’t fair.
The problem is that I don’t have any solutions to the problem either, and it seems no-one does. So people pull back from the encyclopedia with a “screw this” attitude into their cabals, they work away at either things above at Foundation level, they move to other Wikimedia projects to write dictionary entries or news articles instead (this is fine, but it may not be what they want to do), or they hide away with articles that get little attention and work quietely. People are only going to keep seeing the attraction of this, with closed mailing lists and IRC channels being so much more pleasant. When you are in one or two the outside community starts to look a lot worse than it used to, as you realise the alternative. freenode staff and helpers have had this problem recently as I describe here, because our own private communities are a lot nicer than the outside, public social channels. Unless we do something soon, more and more will retreat up and out – including me.
GCSE results in
Well, I have them. And in general I am disappointed for one particular reason. Fifteen minutes before I was supposed to have them I found Mr Moore, a teacher who spends most of his life in front of a spreadsheet, and he gave me the results. This also told me my position in the year: out of all of those who did eleven GCSEs, I was top, that put me tenth in the year overall. Of those above me who did twelve GCSEs and thus got more points, one got straight/twelve A*s and the others have other peppered grades, so it could be argued I was second in the year 
No-one got eleven A*s, or no-one got straight A*s who did eleven GCSEs. Below are results broken down by subject, but a summary: 10 A*s, 1 A in History.
English A*, English Literature A*: This was surprising, I thought I’d probably get an A. I’m pleased though because this is an important subject.
Maths A*, 118/120 on coursework, 475/480 on the two written papers. Not surprising at all, considering how stupidly easy the exam was.
Science (double award) A* A*, also not surprising.
Religious Studies/Education A*, 92/100 on both papers. This is mildly annoying because I was aiming for 100% on the second paper (the first one you do a year before in Y10) but I didn’t improve at all. I hoped I would at least get higher.
Statistics A*
French A*
Food A*, this is quite good because in this subject they only allow a certain number of A*s each year whereas in others in theory everyone could get it, in this only a small slice of the best can.
ICT A*
History A, this is why I am disappointed. I am doing this subject next year and I really need an A then (highest grade at A-level) to aim for Oxbridge. I should have got an A* too, it wasn’t unrealistic. Not a lot I can do now.
Reminiscence
An experienced Wikimedian who is involved with more Foundation-level stuff told me today that he thought he really didn’t know “how the English Wikipedia works anymore”. I was inclined to say the same thing about myself because it seems that I have pulled back out of Wikipedia itself and into the Foundation stuff too (that is, Wikimedia rather than Wikipedia) – but via a different route. In general experienced users who have been around for a long time have in recent years pulled out of editing to a great degree due to the fact that things are getting more and more unpleasant down in the article editing bazaar. People fight more, rules are tossed about. This is due partly to the steady growth of Wikipedia in active users and articles, but I get the impression those who wish to do the community harm are more prominent. The other reason is that sane minds are generally needed at the Foundation level. So they all gather up there, and thus cabals inevitably form.
The above is the usual for people who were involved in the encyclopedia long in the past. For myself I seem to be in the same negative position of not really knowing what is going on for a lot of the time but I got there a different way. I was never a proper article writer because I don’t know a lot to add that isn’t there. I don’t really have the patience to research and source long and complicated articles. But when I started out I still really wanted to help with Wikipedia because it is something good that can really benefit humankind (and other things we may come into contact with, due to our improved education, such as the environment on this planet). So I got into vandal-fighting and mediation and IRC (and then freenode staff through this). I then began to prepare myself to run for adminship, as my intention was to help administrate the project as I thought I could really help here. At this point I began to move into Foundation matters, finding it more interesting. And then I realised I no longer knew what was going on over on Wikipedia – I found myself spread way too thin as can happen and so started cutting back on what I do, severing connections.
So as it stands now, I look back on working on the English Wikipedia itself with nostalgia in a way. I knew friends back then who now have little time for the project due to real life commitments and I miss simply plugging away at tasks. So, the answer is arguably just dropping back in and doing them. This I would like to do, but I simply don’t have the time with crazy volumes of reading material stemming from my e-mail inbox and elsewhere, and jobs that need to get done that I have responsibility for – or so it seems. And yet I still sometimes find myself floating between things, not sure what to do. I’m no longer really comfortable in what I am doing, and it makes me less productive and useful to Wikimedia. However, I will keep going, and hope that I slot down into a niche where I can trundle along 