Talk:WikipediaOS

FYI: here is some info about social contracts for Wikipedia + Debian + Google which could be integrated: Wikimedia Ethics/Social contract, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 15:10, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Criticism

Hypotheses

It is unsurprising that the development models are similar. I think the inventors of Wikipedia followed the open source example (which grew out of scientific cooperation at universities, for instance on Unix).

• Task specialization: This hypothesis is not very specific. Are there any examples of large projects without any specialization?
• Meritocracy as a Decision-Making system: Meritocracy creeps in automatically if contributors are given a certain freedom and are allowed to convince with their contributions. This is again very unsurprising.
• Content and process transparency: While it doesn't appear to be strictly necessary the most inclusive process does appear to suggest both. Process transparency is only found in some open source projects and may be motivated by the understanding that process transparency is desirable.
• Release early, release often: Again that seems rather unsurprising because a large and unorganized crowd of observers requires some form of publication to become interested and maybe motivation to contribute.
• Development of parallel comments: That appears to be the rather weak observation that people make notes and groups of people can improve their organization with notes written for third parties.
• Benevolent dictatorship: A benevolent dictatorship is merely a contributor who made the most remarkable contribution and thus a result of meritocracy.
• Possibility of forking: When content is licensed under an open license that allows forking then forking is possible. This is quite unsurprising.
• Licensing: The licensing model of Wikipedia follows the example of open source and open source followed the example of scientific cooperation at universities, which, even without open source, would be adequate for Wikipedia.
• Social filtering: That appears to be the rather weak observation that people hold opinions about other people and that projects that accept content from the general public need to implement some kind of selection mechanism.
• Platforms for nesting projects: This doesn't appear to be an observation at all, unless it is the observation that web sites that have shown to be useful for one type of project are also likely to host another type of project.
• Reusing of sources: This is the observation that if content may be reused according to its license than that can happen.
• Netiquette: This is the incredibly weak observation that communication in large groups may benefit from well-known rules.
• Need of "enemies of the common"': This doesn't appear to be an observation either. Microsoft’s hegemonic model may have provided some motivation to open source programmers, but it is unclear if that was relevant. Open source grew out of cooperation between researchers on the Unix operating system. In case of Wikipedia this does appear to be even less applicable. One could say that the non-existence of another Wikipedia (as the only known alternative development model to Britannica’s or Encarta’s development model) was the main motivation. Quite unsurprising.
• Activity tracks: This appears to be the observation that publication can motivate readers to read the publication and that some publications are published through specific channels. Quite unsurprising.
• HowTos and ad hoc guidelines: This does appear to be almost identical to the the Development of parallel comments observation.
• Issue Tracking / Debugging: Similar to Social filtering this observation repeats that accepting content from the general public may require some kind of quality control.
• "Self-interested" participants: This appears to be the observation that people may follow different motivations, not only a single motivation that appears to be the "officially endorsed" motivation.
• Differences in gender participation: This appears to be a sociological observation about differences in behavior between men and women.

I would say the parallelisms that have been found are not very characteristic and also unsurprising because Wikipedia follows the model of open source cooperation and cooperation found at universities, which seems adequate for Wikipedia. In some areas Wikipedia goes further than open source and university projects out of the need to organize more people interacting on more and more inhomogeneous content in a shorter time. --Bernhard Fastenrath 11:40, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Math Formula

@Peter Ellis: Sorry, we have a math formula vandal who visits occasionally, and it wasn't clear on first view how the formula was relevant to this page. Thanks for your contributions! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 18 October 2019 (UTC)