Thomas Beale wrote:
> David Forslund wrote:
>  > http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
>  >
>  > is the link to the article I intended to post.
>  > David Forslund wrote:
>  > > I thought folks might like to see this article.   Any comments?
>  > >
>  > > -Dave
>  > >
> this brings back a big debate about among this group where I was
> lambasted by some for suggesting that you still had to do engineering
> and have some control to make open source software work. In the words of
> the article, what you always need is a focussed editorial group and
> change management policy to make sure the thing being built isn't just a
> wall covered in grafitti - there has to be a gatekeeper.  The reason why
> Linux works so well is that Torvalds is himself the iron fist of control
> over the whole thing - he is the gateway, the editorial board and the
> change manager (I think he has a couple of workers above the
> lieutenant's level).
> 
> Why Wikipedia doesn't have one is a mystery to me. Why it is as good as
> it is (however good you think it is) is also a mystery.

It is wrong to think of wikipedia as an open source/open content
project. In fact, it is about 1 million separate open source/open
content projects (that is, articles), each with their own project team.
All the good projects (articles) have a small "editorial" team, often
just one person, which really cares about them. If someone else makes a
worthwhile contribution, it is allowed to stand. If someone else
degrades the content, then the editorial team changes it back to its
former state. Often content goes through many cycles of degradation and
restoration, but the editorial team usually wins through sheer
doggedness. And the overall, average direction of change across the 1
million articles is towards the better, although it is easy to find
examples of articles which spiral down. But most get better.

However, if wikipedia articles were not based on the wiki-wiki roll-back
paradigm, the whole thing would collapse. As it is, the self-appointed
editorial team for each article can roll back changes with a few clicks
of the mouse. Self-appointed? Yes, just like the way in which leaders of
almost all open source software projects are self-appointed. Both OSS
and wikipedia are meritocracies in which power and position is gained by
doing things - writing software or writing articles.

Tim C



 
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