Continuing my previous thread of thought:

In response to the original laments about Wikipedia’s growing pains, Clay Shirky’s “Rebuttal” points out the organizational issues, calling it “governance”, and comments that (my paraphase here) the academic process is one of collect-filter-publish by experts; academia values this process to the exclusion of Wikipedia’s group-filtered process.

Shirky makes the prediction that a “core group” will develop to combat the hoards in an attempt to maintain some kind of academic-ish credibility, but realization that the hoards just will keep jumping in will eventually follow. Acceptance will come that freedom brings what freedom will bring.

Personally, I think this is contigent whether Shirky’s description of Wikipedia as a “real time reference / resource” is accepted as its primary identity. Wikipedia is different things to different people: to academics, they classify it as a reference-wannabe. To Netizens, it’s proof that the collective will and effort will lead to further democratization of information. To Students, it’s the easiest way to get a school report out of the way. These are not incompatible views. It’s only when one puts the expectations of one group over another that until you start to impose group standards, be they philosophical or methodological, across all users of the service. And that’s when governance becomes an issue; the number of issues scales with the number of viewpoints and people wielding power and influence.

From a pure project perspective, you can look at Wikipedia as an example of the conflict between the “do it now” versus “do it right” schools of thought. The “do-it-now” people always get something out first, irking the hell out of the “do it right” naysayers who are still formulating what “right” is. And usually, they’re the ones who ultimately are correct, given a particular viewpoint. Then they will all argue which “right” or which “now” is the most important and bicker bicker bicker.

No one will be happy until the “do what is right” people, those adroit individuals with charisma, vision, and contextual intelligence, are able to clarify the viewpoint that should be and can sell it to the whole team. Assuming that there is a problem in the first place, and it passes the “for the project, not the person” test.

I have a horrible feeling that I’ve made a case for the existence of politicians. Oh well.