I forget how I stumbled across David Gerard‘s wikipediafied essay on process, but after about a month since its creation, what is important is that it exists and has sparked debate. I’m not a Wikipedia contributor — I don’t even remember my login there — however, I think the issues and lessons learned from David et al’s commentary are valid in other forums.
“We’re here to write an encyclopedia,” the essay begins. In the world of Marty Seigel, that would be a design statement, a touchstone statement that grounds all of the crazy innovations into the essence of the mission.
Wikipedia is outrageously successful, so much so this project defines the medium for many. In fact, one of the underlying hopes for those in attendance at WikiSym 2006 was to distinguish wiki from Wikipedia, an implementation of a wiki. While the project mission may be about the content, the fact that millions read it and thousands edit it implies a structure requiring rules to guide the interactions between participants. Policy, therefore, is inevitable. Process is the negotiation of mission through policy. However, there is a perception that bloated process is one of the reasons historical contributors are becoming inactive.
The Gerard essay makes two really good points: You can’t legislate against misunderstanding or malice; and Humans are not robots. People with bad intent — which in a wiki, you are not supposed to assume — will do bad things, rules be damned. If you enforce through technology, you turn the wiki into something else. There has to be a strong place in a user-content community to value human judgement. The more rules that seek to guard against it, the less likely humans will be to understand and comply.
Good process will affirm the following questions:
- Does it follow simply and logically from the core policies?
- Can is be recalled from memory in 1-2 sentences?
- Is it flexible enough to handle corner cases?
- Is it transparent enough to avoid undue strain on involved editors?
- Does is reflect common sense appropriate for the community?
- Is it easy for a new editor to comprehend, preferably by example over reading?
A great process is one people don’t realize is a process. It’s called transparency in interface design, so perhaps process is the interface allowing people to fulfill the mission. If a process is perceived as good, but people don’t follow it, then it’s a bad process.
