CPOV Listings …Patrick Lichty has been stressing his interest in wiki-based communities in general, a meta*perspective that naturally appeals to me.
Here's a comment I posted in regard to that Big Picture POV —
QUOTE
Having participated in several wikioid start up projects before I ever heard of Wikipedia, and still participating in a wide variety of similar projects today, I share this point of view.
The feature of social-technical architecture that most markedly distinguishes a wiki system is its "erasability". This is a major boon to people, like me, who never manage to write anything anywhere near the way it needs to be on the first 20 or 30 drafts or so. And its aid to collaboration is clear, at least, among folks who are capable of genuine dialogue in pursuing joint work.
The point where erasability becomes a disabling bug in the groupware is when some participants in a debate discover that they can "win" arguments simply by deleting the opposing arguments.
Once that happens, even a little, the people who resort to this type of easy win almost always become hopelessly addicted to it — it becomes an automatic reflex, often literally enforced by bots — inquiry is short-circuited and the "community" has to be protected by scare-quotes from then on out.
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Jon Awbrey, 18 Mar 2010, CET 19:18