Four Breakpoints in Search of a Debugger, Extracting the Lessons of Hard Experience Options

[Jon Awbrey]

In September of 2006 I still had hopes that the Citizendium project would absorb the lessons of Wikipedia's mistakes and be able to profit from them. With that in mind, I made an attempt to summarize what I had learned from my own experience with the imminently bad example supplied by Wikipedia, setting out my conclusions as a list of critical make-or-break points for the design of any future project of this kind.

For now I'll just refer to my original postings on these "breakpoints", hoping for a chance to flesh them out later.

• Breakpoint 1.  Anonymity ⇒ Irresponsibility ⇒ Police ⇒ Autocracy
• Breakpoint 2.  Lack of Acquaintance with the Conversation on Knowledge
• Breakpoint 3.  Becoming a Resource that Researchers Actually Use
• Breakpoint 4.  No More Fairy Tales

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)

[jeremystalked]

I'd say that the anonymity - really a lack of barriers to contribution - helped get Wikipedia off the ground in the first place. Plus, the anonymity wasn't detrimental in any way at the beginning because the system wasn't worth gaming or attacking - Wikipedia was too obscure.

This post has been edited by jeremystalked:

[Jon Awbrey]

I'd say that the anonymity — really a lack of barriers to contribution — helped get the KKK off the ground in the first place. Plus, the anonymity wasn't detrimental in any way at the beginning because the system wasn't worth gaming or attacking — the KKK was too obscure.

[jeremystalked]

http://bigstupididiot.com/files/2009/09/ku...an_children.jpg

Harmless.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/images/1151.jpg

Scary.


Anonymity, plus the perceived safety of the Mob, is a problem.