Plea For Better Wiki

Once upon a time, WardsWiki was a great forum where smart and experienced software developers could share their knowledge about PeopleProjectsAndPatterns, and where other smart people could learn. Mutual respect among the participants led to a sense of community and a set of generally accepted norms that kept it humming nicely without need for an authoritarian regime.

This is clearly no longer the case. Participation in the wiki is now dominated by people with little background and no interest in software development, and there is no sense of community except among the old timers who wonder how things could have gotten so bad. The newcomers don't believe things were ever any better, and don't believe the wiki has any rules or purpose. -- last edit Feb04 by Kris

I don't claim to speak for the community, for the majority, or for anyone but myself. However, I suggest that those who share my desire for a better wiki follow these conventions for a while:

Create signal. Only write about things you know from your own experience. Create and improve DocumentMode pages. Only ask questions if you are sure the answers will be valuable to a lot of readers. Don't participate in ThreadMess. If you have a contentious opinion to express, express it clearly on one page rather than on many pages.
Refactor more. There are a lot of bad pages here. Refactoring lets you do something useful with less possibility of triggering an argument.
Reduce noise. Don't make things worse. Don't join in any of the flame wars, even to protect "the right side". Don't try to protect wikizens who are under attack. Don't participate in discussions about topics you don't understand, even if your goal is to raise your understanding or start something interesting.
Refrain from making OffTopic contributions. I like the off-topic stuff as much as anyone, but it just leads to too much noise. There are lots of other forums where you can discuss politics, movies, books, music, TV, boogers, lawyer jokes, etc. Yes, other developers may have a certain kind of view on these things that you find more interesting than it would be in another forum, but it would be for the best if we all concentrate on software development for a while.
Stay away from any HolyWars. Nobody is going to gain anything from yet another comparison/attack/defense of programming languages, operating systems, methodologies, and so forth.
No name-calling or insults. No matter how much the target deserves it. Don't tell any individual that you don't like their style, or that their ideas are bad. Just ignore the idiots - others will detect them as easily as you do. If you must express disagreement, make sure you are attacking what has been written, not its writer.
If you delete something that doesn't belong, and it gets restored, just leave it alone. Don't bother deleting things written by those who you know will be upset by the deletion.

To those of you who do not have a software development background, or who do not wish to write about software development, I will only say that I bear you no ill will, but I hope you will seek out another forum that better suits your interests. As long as you continue participating here, you are only making a bad situation worse.

Of course, that is simply a request. I have no power over others' actions in wiki other than to express a preference for valuable contributions. If that doesn't interest you, then I have no other recourse, but I can live with that.

Thank you for this excellent advice. I couldn't have said it better myself. One has only to scan HowWeTalk to appreciate the momentum of this site. To that I can only add "tell us about your coding experience." -- WardCunningham Wards remarks made earlier

Can you be proud of your contributions to this Wiki?

Every once in a while, I search through this Wiki to find my old contributions. If they still have value, they stay. If they are not so hot, they get spruced up or eliminated altogether. Sometimes my nose gets rubbed in my errors, as in the case of the so-called "bug" I "found" in Netscape Gecko, which was my own durn fault. I left the discussion there so that visitors could see me get a well-deserved drubbing.

But what about other contributions? Are we all satisfied with the editing changes we have made to pages on this Wiki? Have all of our contributions been well-reasoned, thoughtful, concise, and accurate? Do we make additions or deletions thinking of others' points of view? Are we considerate? Do we polish off the rough edges of our contributions before we hit the save button?

It is not enough for us to just scribble some random thoughts down here and expect someone else to reword or reorganize our mess later. Granted, we're not all Ernest Hemingway when it comes to putting words down, but that is no excuse for not being prideful of our work here. Shouldn't every word tell? Shouldn't we be proud of everything we contribute to this collective body of work? Can you say that you are proud of what you have done here?

If we aren't proud of this Wiki as ours, then it will simply go the way of the dinosaurs. Let's not let that happen. Put pride in your Wiki work.

A good page - apply to good effect

I would add one or two other things.

Read the wiki. There is a lot of great interest and use here and I keep finding new things.
Keep the place tidy. I have been keeping RecentChanges tidy now for a number of years, in succession to others who did it before me.

I also agree a lot with Create signal above. I am creating code, often using the BoostLibraries and I do contribute knowledge where I have think I have something to offer. I still believe this is a useful place to spend time.

-- JohnFletcher

CategoryCollaboration CategoryWikiProgress CategoryCommunity