> Wikipedia shows one version of an adaptable ideal: The people who are affected by decisions ought to be the ones making them.
The democratic power over the rules of the game is what sets apart Wikipedia from the SE model.
> Wikipedians are firmly insistent that the site is not a “democracy,” because it doesn’t defer to “majority rule” and instead uses a consensus process. I don’t agree with them. They’re a democracy, whether they like the term or not. Democracy is commonly misunderstood as mob rule, but it isn’t. Democracy is about participation in power, and Wikipedia’s experiment is the closest thing we have to a complete open-participation model.
> It is a little outpost of communism in the brutal capitalistic world of Silicon Valley: Nobody owns it, everybody is equal, there is no money exchanged, advertising is banned, and people do things because they like doing them, rather than because they have to or because they’re paid for it. These values are completely absent from the other major information channels on the internet. But they’re good values. They should spread. A world run like Wikipedia would be a wonderful world indeed.
That, even to me, sounds like wishful thinking. But I can dream, can't I.
@Færd I cannot trust random guys on the internet, no matter how vocal, to know how to run a site as good as Jeff Atwood.
He made some weird decisions. Some stupid decisions, and some decisions you'd disagree with if you come by, but nothing replaces experience with previous now-failed info exchange services and trying to avoid the mistakes they made
In fact, the consensus on meta.SO seems that SO starting getting flooded by crap and hence bitter curators creating the 'unwelcoming' environment as soon as it started deviating from Atwood's core principles on running the site.
@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ You missed the point on so many levels I'm at a loss where to start.
First off, while some percentage of the data on Wikipedia may be authored by totally random guys, the governance of the site is far from random. You can read the article again, or take a look at this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Governance.
Second, even if somebody else made the perfectest decisions for me and provided me with the bestest opportunities to follow those decisions, I wouldn't consider myself an accomplished human being. Freedom is among the highest values for individuals and societies to strive towards.
It's never absolute or complete. It's hard, or impossible, to rigorously define. It's not black-and-white. It cannot be achieved overnight. It's more like a process; a path, or a compass. Whatever it is, it should figure high in the balancing of things, but unfortunately it's totally absent from your argument. Think of a real-world government modeled on an SE-like example: it would be near dictatorial.
Third, the article is more a polemic against huge tech companies that wield tremendous influence over society at large, than a criticism of a comparatively small platform like SE. SE would definitely rank higher than FB or Google on the democratic scale, but nowhere near Wikipedia in this regard. The underlying governance principles, to the extent that are comparable, are radically different.
So, yeah, SE was not a focal point, and I just added the comment because I realized I was using an SE chat and wanted to make a (deficient) comparison in passing. I don't believe a successful democratically-governed Q&A site is an impossibility, and I would like to see it happen, but I would leave it to other, more relevant people to hash out. I'm mostly a pastime chat user here.
BTW Wikipedia has its fair share of shortages too, many of which reflections of those in the non-virtual world, "but those problems are for the community itself to work out".
Did Albert Einstein say this about World Wars?
I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
or did he say this?
I do not know what weapons the third world war will be fought with, but I know that the fourth one will be fought with s...
Well, IMO no greedy asshole is too dumb to realize anymore that the modern way of conquering the world is shaking hands with a Silicon Valley giant, but I've been wrong before.
Borders are still pretty strong, but borders around ideas are beginning to fade. There's still different languages, separating some ideas like garden walls separating gardens, but the percentage of world population completely ignorant of the opposing opinions is shrinking. Combine that with advisers that foresee the future instead of the front of their nose like the leader they're advising, and the only way to win conflicts seems to be winning minds
There's still some love for good old-fashioned bloodshed though