Wiki community
From Wikinfo
Wiki community is a somewhat loaded term referring to the group entity of active members associated with a wiki. Wikis are not just software systems, but also have:
- a social group of users - what is usually referred to as "wiki community"
- wiki rules - codes of conduct for the group.
- themes - the themes or topics for discussion within the group.
- members who promote positive development by:
- creating new useful pages
- reformatting old pages
- adding new information
- correcting incorrect information
- adding diverse viewpoints
- discussing content with others
Critical Views
Some wikis focus discussion around specific topics, and users who drift off the topic are warned they are off topic, on pain of banishment. Some users, either accidentally or deliberately, set up pages within a wiki which are for their own private purposes (or that of a group), and such a set of pages is often called a walled garden. Within some wikis, the rules of policy or etiquette do not permit the setting up of such walled gardens, and other members of the group may delete such pages. Some wiki communities are quite strong and open to various directions from newcomers.
However, Wikipedia and MeatballWiki are examples which have strong wiki communities, and in which many constructive examples of user collaboration can be seen, but where newcomers are regularly labeled as "disruptive", "problem users", or wiki vandals, if only by discussing those communities, policies and content, or by otherwise steering conversation "off topic". Ill will is created when self-styled wiki communities routinely run off well-intentioned contributors.
One explanation of this relates to the original meaning of the word "community", as a group of people sharing some physical proximity, or even risk of bodily harm. In "real" communities, goodwill, empathy, general ethics and morals, politics and authority are ultimately consequences of physical and environmental interactions in which members have an obvious interest. By contrast, "virtual communities" often manufacture their community by using vague dedications to narrow goals, called "barn raisings", which literally force unity around a small number of arbitrary standards. Thus, the ideology of online communities can, and often does, become a major source of groupthink, by failing to make the critical ontological distinction between real human communities and mere social clubs or cliques, where group leaders can engage in moralizing, even irrational, reasoning about their wiki.
See Meatball:WikiTaboos, for example
As a result, empathy can be a rare find in some wiki communities, and may lead some users to act as if the wiki were an ego campaign, whether intentional or not. Wiki communities often serve as discussion forums where freedom of expression, and a lack of shared proximity, allow the niceties of society and etiquette to be left behind, where words can become swords. When a user or group of users want to set up wiki pages of their own, called "forking", and if this is not permitted within a wiki in which they (are trying to) participate, they should investigate the use of wiki farms, or using the now common right to fork to start their own wiki.
See also:
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Wiki community" http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_community, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
