User:DGG/Content and Behavior

content and behavior are linked

The basic problem which affects every topic lies in our not having a mechanism to get reasonably consistent and stable decisions on content. Arb com tentatively proposed a year ago a committee advising it when content and referencing issues affected their discussions, which did not meet with much encouragement. A parallel committee to arb com would work, if it had the right mix of people--but it will not be easy to accomplish that by an election for any group of relatively small size. there is the possibility of relying on the wikiProjects. I worked a little also at Citizendium, where there was an level of approved editors who can make such firm decisions--it did not progress far, partly because the prejudices of one or two such editors can slant the content noticeably--a mistake in appointing authoritative editors there is much harder to deal with than in an open community.

Possibly some modification of these last two, with very broad workgroup committees coordinating all the workgroups in a broad area. All of this, though, would be a matter involving major changes in the way people work and think about their roles here. I am reluctant to do this-- after a career of advocating radical change in my profession, I have become somewhat of a conservative about Wikipedia. We are a unique open content project without top down control that has managed to produce very important and very widely used content. that would not otherwise have been accomplished--that affects the way people generally go about their lives, and has effected a paradigm shift in the organization of information. I would try to adjust our ways to deal with the problems rather than take the chance of ruining it. If someone wants to experiment with a different structure, the safest thing to do is to start a branch.

The best way of improving the overall structure is more active participation by a broader range of people in decision-making process. Unfortunately, in an already rather unfriendly, hostile rule-ridden and unpredictable general environment, the decision making process is exceptionally unfriendly, hostile, unpredictable, and rule-ridden. The efforts of the many people here who like helping newcomers can be destroyed by a small number of hostile and suspicious editors and administrators,

Arb com is basically right in one thing--the point to focus on is behavior. They're wrong in another--they must be willing to enforce strong sanctions against established members of the community who are unable or unwilling to conform to standards of civilized interaction.