QUOTE(Kelly Martin @ Sat 11th July 2009, 6:36pm)
Surely there are online communities with expertise they're willing to share? Oh, wait, I forget: Wikipedia is unlike anything that ever came before and cannot possibly learn anything from the experiences of these other places....
Another very good point. What they really need, IMO, is an advisory group made up of people who were heavily involved in Social Web initiatives that actually
failed, and figure out if some of the things WP is doing (or not doing) are similar to some of the things that caused those other sites to have problems. After all, many of the people who ran those sites have had considerable time to think about what they did wrong, or didn't do right, and it might even pain them somewhat to see others doing pretty much the same thing.
It's far more likely that WP'ers will want to consult only with people who run sites that are spectacularly successful
right now, namely Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, because this will make the WP'ers feel more special and
muy importante. But they won't learn much from those folks that they don't already know, since the extent of their wisdom is likely to be "come up with a popular idea and run with it."