Wikipedia:Facebookization
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Facebookization in the context of Wikipedia, is a common belief that something is bad for Wikipedia, because said something would resemble what Facebook (FB) does. There are many FB elements that scare Wikipedians because they are opposite to core values of Wikipedia, these include but are not limited to:
- Highlighting (artificial) social status
- Creating a filter bubble
- Influencing your decision making
- Monetizing collected data about you as a consumer, with limited awareness by the user
- Monetizing your labor (reviews, editing places)
- Forcing you, by way of social pressure, to engage with the website
Added to that is a Wikipedia policy that emphasizes that Wikipedia is not a social network, often quoted as WP:NOTFACEBOOK. This policy clarifies that the purpose of Wikipedia is not to run a social network website, but to write an encyclopedia.
Why not to use it
[edit]In a discussion about the design or functionality of the Wikipedia website, and how that website interacts with our community, the usage of the word Facebookization or WP:NOTFACEBOOK functions as playing the Nazi card. It steps over the many complexities that apply to building websites and/or communities and instead distracts people with a common fear. Fear is the idea-killer.
As an argument, it is too easy, oversimplified and misguided, but at the same time stifles counterarguments because no one wants to argue in favor of 'evil' Facebook. For those that do continue to discuss, it forces them to bring into the discussion the many fine subtleties that come with the usage of a technique, which often simply distracts from the discussion and sometimes can be difficult to argue if English is not your mother-tongue.
Discussions about technology
[edit]As a leading website and because it has the means to do so, Facebook has tried and is using almost every technique in the book somewhere within its huge platform. It has invented new techniques and released significant parts of its technology stack for usage outside of Facebook. It, as many other technology giants like Google, Mozilla, Twitter, is logically on the forefront of Internet development. It is therefore logical that others look towards these giants for guidance on where the future of the web is going.
Everything can be used for both good and evil. Every technique can be executed badly or exceptionally well. Excluding something, just because it has been used by Facebook is therefore erroneous. It might even be considered harmful, as to stand still is to fall behind. Not acknowledging that things around us are changing and that we will have to change with that to some degree has been the death of many a website in the history of the Internet.
Discussions about social aspects
[edit]To compare any social activities of our community to the activity of people on Facebook, is to imply that every social network is a social networking service. Our community by definition of the word community is inherently a social construct, in our case around the ideal of creating freely accessible and Free'ly usable knowledge for the world.
We have many social aspects, including but not limited to:
- a newspaper
- etiquette
- customizable signatures
- user pages
- Talk pages
- Mail a user
- barnstars
- userboxes
- WikiProjects
- Edit-a-thons
- Conferences
- Blocking policy
- Our fourth and even our fifth pillar
- We fight
- We agree
The only rule that our social constructs are limited by, is that they are in service of the sharing of knowledge.