I make a lot of use of Wikipedia and have sometimes thought that I was well qualified to be an editor, wikispeak for contributor, although I never actually got around to being more than an occasional contributor of money. But an advertisement for their bash at the Barbican caught my eye recently and having signed up for that, I thought it would be sensible to do a little preparation.
Spurning Wikipedia itself for some reason, I turned to Amazon where as luck would have it I lighted upon 'How Wikipedia Works' by Ayers, Matthews and Yates, veteran wikipedians all, which turned out to be a fat but well produced paperback, which does indeed tell me a great deal about how Wikipedia works. A good book, of which I have already read a lot more than I would have been likely to read on-screen.
I had previously read in, as I recall, a gently condescending article in a literary magazine, that wikipedians spend a lot more time and energy on talking about Wikipedia than on producing useful copy (articles in wikispeak). One good product of all this chat is three interlocking principles which help govern the content. V for verifiable: all articles should be verifiable in well regarded, established secondary sources, with Wikipedia seeing itself as a tertiary source. NPOV for neutral point of view: articles should respect the balance of views. A majority view should get the most air time, minority views should get some and cranky views should get little or none. Sounds much the same as one of the policies of the BBC. NOR for no original research: articles are for the established truth, not for breaking truth, breaking news or truths which are not yet widely acknowledged to be such. Wikipedia is not a personal soapbox and people are discouraged from editing articles either about themselves or about the organisations for which they work. And the condescending article was quite right in that there does seem to be a lot of case law.
I have learned that Wikopedia is very democratic, one expression of this being that all articles have a talk page and an edit page in the background. There are a lot of editors, many of whom come in for a few years then drift away again, all editors are equal and pretty much anyone with an internet capable computer can be one. Wikipedia is truly a collective effort. Being an expert on, to take a random example, stag beetles (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stag_beetle) and then throwing your weight around in the group of stag beetle editors does not work. What does work is patience and respect for the views of others.
A very pleasing feature, coming from a high-control background, is that the low-control wikiscene seems to work. There has to be some control, particularly of the articles about important or well-known people, because there are some vandals about and because there can be accidents. There is also machinery for resolving disagreements or worse between editors: in such a large operation such things are going to happen from time to time and in extreme cases editors can be barred. But what I have read so far suggests that not all that much of all this is needed. All part of what must make the wikiscene fascinating for sociologists and other sorts of gists and I would guess that there are plenty of learned articles and PhDs out there.
However, while I have been impressed by what I have learned, I am no longer sure that I have the relevant skills to be an editor. First because it would require some commitment in time for it to be worthwhile, say a day a week to get started, perhaps less after one had settled down, and this seems rather a lot just at the moment. Second because, having come from a high-control background, I am rather enjoying being in a no-control world and I am not sure that I would fit comfortably into such a strongly collective and cooperative enterprise. But we shall see: who knows what the next few weeks might bring.
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