Just by way of bringing folks up to date, my last post to the Cult, er, “Critical†POV List was partly a followup to
this one by Seth Finkelstein:
QUOTE
<CPOV> The Wikipedia Cult
Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com>
Thu Jun 3 15:04:25 CEST 2010
> nathaniel tkacz
> i don' think the question of whether wikipedia is or is not a cult is a useful one.
> what is there to add by calling it a cult?
Demystification.
I've been saying "Wikipedia is a cult" for years now, including in some columns I wrote for the
Guardian newspaper, for example:
"Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia"One subtext of the Wikipedia hype is that businesses can harvest an eager pool of free labour, disposable volunteers who will donate effort for the sheer joy of it. The fantasy is somewhat akin to Santa's workshop, where little elves work happily away for wages of a glass of milk and a cookie. Whereas the reality is closer to an exploitative cult running on sweatshop labour."
The point is a very concise way (four words) of conveying an alternate explanation for Wikipedia's functioning, against the immense marketing of it as a mystery created by magical technology ("wikis" and "The Internet").
I get a lot of flack from describing Wikipedia as a cult. One common response is a strawman argument, something like: Cults are by definition extreme apocalyptic, murderous, or suicidal, organizations. Wikipedia does not fit that definition. Therefore Wikipedia is not a cult.
But I'd say such a definition would be drawn too narrowly. Extreme cults tends to be self-limiting, precisely because they are too dysfunctional to survive (mass suicide is not good for organizational continuity).
Then sometimes people want me to give an extensive theory, which will handle all cases and examples they can imagine. That's very tedious.
The basic point is that "cult" is a extremely illuminating way of analyzing how Wikipedia works (or doesn't), in terms of social dynamics. Especially in the face of much pressure to view it as some sort of unique technological entity which should not be connected to many well-known aspects of group psychology.
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer sethf at sethf.com
http://sethf.comSee
Guardian columns at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/sethfinkelstein