January 12, 2012 at 15:02Another wiki project on contemporary culture
Hey. And let me tell you about another wiki project? It sounds threatening, but oh well ...
Everyone knows (and maybe not very well) that the wiki, as a platform, has a lot of shortcomings, not only technical, but primarily social. And if you can still fight the former at least somehow, patching patches for the engine on the go, then the latter strive to bury any project almost from its launch. The main reason is that wiki projects can hardly be considered the notorious web 2.0, which initially implied filling the project with content by the users themselves. In fact, any Internet encyclopedia, although it is postulated, does not succeed due to the number of restrictions on the topic and the requirements for the literary component of any article. That is, in fact, the entire writing audience of a wiki should consist of specialists who also have practical writing skills. Clear, that with this approach, the number of rulebooks, the level of negativity and the number of bureaucratic procedures will gradually increase, and the number of active participants will fall. And this skew will only increase over time until it reaches a final value of 100%.
The main reason for the negativity of users to wiki projects is the removal of content that they think is useful and the excessive emasculation of completed articles. Indeed, only historians are able to turn centuries of people's lives into a bunch of interesting facts. The same thing happens with articles in Internet encyclopedias: harsh judgments are deleted, sharp wordings are smoothed out, alternative points of view fall outside the scope, and instead of sharp or salty, over time, it turns out squeezed, strained and digested.
The main reason for the tightening of moderation and an increase in the number of bureaucratic procedures is the reasonable incompetence of the moderators in the issues raised in the articles (with all desire, it is impossible to equally well understand nuclear physics, macrame knitting techniques and aspects of the political system in the Congo) and the number of alternative points of view that accumulate and roll over beyond all reasonable and unreasonable limits.
Of the little things - disgusting and not uniform navigation and the inability to find what you need instead of what you thought was necessary to slip.
Armed with the idea of neutralizing these problems, we tried for some time to solve them in one of the wiki projects with already established traditions and approaches to moderation. As a result, a failure repair was obtained. It became clear that new approaches to the organization should be done with those who are ready to fool their heads with these innovations. Ultimately, we decided to make another project, in which we could try to cross a hedgehog with a hedgehog and thus solve a number of sore-nosed problems.
In an attempt to solve all these problems and in the process of choosing between the options “delete this” and “prohibit this”, we came to the final idea of “do not delete anything at all”. At the same time, of course, everyone perfectly understands that numerous points of view and branches of the topic make any article unreadable, which means that they will have to be stored, even in close proximity, but separately from the main part of the article. The idea as a whole is not new (hi, twtrops), but with its own nuances. In addition to all this, there is a vocabulary-type navigation system and an attempt to separate the moderation process from the likes-dislikes categories by evaluating exclusively the facts of the existence of the phenomenon itself. Simply put, the subject of the article must exist in nature somewhere else, in addition to the author’s own head - this is the only condition.
So with pride and trepidation we present you a new project - Urbanculture
The main topic of the new encyclopedia was to choose a modern culture (and that’s all, from IT parties to rock bands and jokes about Putin). Now half of all cultural life takes place on the Internet, and the second half is directly related to it. And all this together is almost never described. Moreover, even if you check the theory, then do it on a grand scale, and a more controversial topic than modern culture is probably not easy to find.
In this post, in addition to traditional PR and in every way agitation of potential participants (this is on our part), I really hope to hear all possible comments and suggestions (and this is from you), which, while the project is new, can still be put into practice.
Everyone knows (and maybe not very well) that the wiki, as a platform, has a lot of shortcomings, not only technical, but primarily social. And if you can still fight the former at least somehow, patching patches for the engine on the go, then the latter strive to bury any project almost from its launch. The main reason is that wiki projects can hardly be considered the notorious web 2.0, which initially implied filling the project with content by the users themselves. In fact, any Internet encyclopedia, although it is postulated, does not succeed due to the number of restrictions on the topic and the requirements for the literary component of any article. That is, in fact, the entire writing audience of a wiki should consist of specialists who also have practical writing skills. Clear, that with this approach, the number of rulebooks, the level of negativity and the number of bureaucratic procedures will gradually increase, and the number of active participants will fall. And this skew will only increase over time until it reaches a final value of 100%.
The main reason for the negativity of users to wiki projects is the removal of content that they think is useful and the excessive emasculation of completed articles. Indeed, only historians are able to turn centuries of people's lives into a bunch of interesting facts. The same thing happens with articles in Internet encyclopedias: harsh judgments are deleted, sharp wordings are smoothed out, alternative points of view fall outside the scope, and instead of sharp or salty, over time, it turns out squeezed, strained and digested.
The main reason for the tightening of moderation and an increase in the number of bureaucratic procedures is the reasonable incompetence of the moderators in the issues raised in the articles (with all desire, it is impossible to equally well understand nuclear physics, macrame knitting techniques and aspects of the political system in the Congo) and the number of alternative points of view that accumulate and roll over beyond all reasonable and unreasonable limits.
Of the little things - disgusting and not uniform navigation and the inability to find what you need instead of what you thought was necessary to slip.
Armed with the idea of neutralizing these problems, we tried for some time to solve them in one of the wiki projects with already established traditions and approaches to moderation. As a result, a failure repair was obtained. It became clear that new approaches to the organization should be done with those who are ready to fool their heads with these innovations. Ultimately, we decided to make another project, in which we could try to cross a hedgehog with a hedgehog and thus solve a number of sore-nosed problems.
In an attempt to solve all these problems and in the process of choosing between the options “delete this” and “prohibit this”, we came to the final idea of “do not delete anything at all”. At the same time, of course, everyone perfectly understands that numerous points of view and branches of the topic make any article unreadable, which means that they will have to be stored, even in close proximity, but separately from the main part of the article. The idea as a whole is not new (hi, twtrops), but with its own nuances. In addition to all this, there is a vocabulary-type navigation system and an attempt to separate the moderation process from the likes-dislikes categories by evaluating exclusively the facts of the existence of the phenomenon itself. Simply put, the subject of the article must exist in nature somewhere else, in addition to the author’s own head - this is the only condition.
So with pride and trepidation we present you a new project - Urbanculture
The main topic of the new encyclopedia was to choose a modern culture (and that’s all, from IT parties to rock bands and jokes about Putin). Now half of all cultural life takes place on the Internet, and the second half is directly related to it. And all this together is almost never described. Moreover, even if you check the theory, then do it on a grand scale, and a more controversial topic than modern culture is probably not easy to find.
In this post, in addition to traditional PR and in every way agitation of potential participants (this is on our part), I really hope to hear all possible comments and suggestions (and this is from you), which, while the project is new, can still be put into practice.