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From: Walter Roberson <roberson@hushmail.com>
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Subject: Re: FEX: the ML file exchange censored and stifled by the makers
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Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:11:59 -0500
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Matthew Simoneau wrote:
> We want the File Exchange to grow in usefulness for everyone by increasing participation.
> One of my biggest influences is Wikipedia&#8217;s &#8220;Please do not bite the newcomers&#8221;.

Well, that's rather an odd choice of models, since Wikipedia is heavily controlled and
is becoming increasingly more so. The open contribution model was deemed not to be
successful by those who control Wikipedia, and they have been locking it down and are
currently discussing strict controls.

My spouse recently (a few weeks ago) took a post-grad course on "Web 2.0" and related
technologies. One of the sessions spend pretty much the entire hour discussing Wikipedia.
The instructor said flat out that these days it is nearly impossible for a "newcomer"
to make a meaningful change to Wikipedia, even if the newcomer is an acknowledged
subject matter expert on the topic -- these days you have to prove yourself to the
Wikipedia clique before nearly *any* change is allowed to stand.

The instructor reported upon an experiment that had been done at one of the Digital Media Labs,
in which the class was given the assignment of making a change to Wikipedia: only 10% of the
changes made by the students were allowed to stand. In another class experiment, the
students were divided into groups which were responsible for making a more substantial
Wikipedia edit -- and to keep at it, taking the feedback and re-writing to improve the
quality and chance that the edit would be accepted. Of the several teams working on
the assignment for over 3 months, only *one* of the team had the Wikipedia controllers
judge the entry as fully acceptable; two others were judged as being good enough to
accept but only with mark-ups indicating that the articles needed improvements, 
and the rest of the teams (5 I think it wa), despite months of university-level work,
were unable to satisfy The Powers That Be to get their articles accepted even with
"needs improvement" commentary.

If your model is Wikipedia, then better study the history of Wikipedia more carefully,
because the contradictions between your current acceptance criteria and your model
make it all too apparent (to me) that your experiment is doomed to failure.