Wcp Summary

This is a summary of the long and intricate WikiChangeProposal articles. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible -- JamBaltine?

Motivations

WikiChangeProposal is an attempt to design a novel WikiEngine that could bypass EditWar and supercede traditional [WikiForum]s. It was motivated by CostinCozianu's negative experiences in WardsWiki: "What WikiChangeProposal is trying to do is offer people the added freedom of a ComfortableSpaceForDisagreement".

Costin believed that the problem with wiki "is that it works on a broken AttentionEconomy," and "has become de facto a place where fighting (ahem competing) for attention benefits is the major driving force". Costin argued that "The market is broken and if we fix it, I think we stand a chance to succeed."

Implementation

The basic system involves version controlled pages: "Personally, I'd like to see the edited versions as branches in a version control (kinda-sorta)".

It uses page versioning to create multiple viewpoints, and also defines democratic teams of editors: "We shall have several wikis, or more precisely: several views on the same wiki. ... First we maintain one wiki exactly as it is now ... let's call it RawMaterialWiki_ ... From this we can set up teams of moderators ... Most importantly formation of teams is absolutely democratic".

This was clarified as: "Editorial teams will form spontaneously and democratically in the sense that anybody can form his own team or several teams. A team is just a collection of people who have the right to use their team name in promoting editorial branches ... every team will have an owner - the guy who created the team - and the owner will add or exclude people from the team. There will always be a team "0" that cannot be changed and that includes everybody"

The WikiChangeProposal then introduces an 'AttentionEconomy', rankings, prizes and weightings of 'personages': "users will be able to view any version of Wiki ... be able to opt-in for an edited edition ...and even rank the editing teams... The crucial assumption ... is that such a scheme would be welcomed by [people who] take pride in editorship ... They will benefit in the AttentionEconomy. ... We may even set as a prize ... [in] some such form of FreeMarket competition. ... the authors will also be rewarded ... [their] word will have more weight than a personage considered damaging's word ...the editors will simply eliminate the personage's 'contributions'."

The WikiChangeProposal includes an interesting perspective on responsibility: "The current proposal tries to privatize the AttentionEconomy ... However, this privatization will not make Wiki less public than it is now, ... but there will be a privatization of responsibility which will allow for a real competition of viewpoints."

A highly competitive system encourages editorial teams to fight for popularity -- only the most popular edition of a page will be prominently displayed: "How does the community ... ensure that an 'edition' stays current? ... I would expect that there can be several competing editorial teams, so some pages will have several editions. But those will hopefully be rare ... So when a user types in the URL of a page if there are no "editions" she will see the raw version, else she will see the edition of the editorial team that is highest ranked. At the same time, a side bar will appear to indicate there are alternative views on the subject and let the user access them." Later this is clarified: "One thing that the mechanism will enforce is that [a] more popular team cannot pretend alternative views do not exist, as the software will automatically display links to alternative views on any topic."

The authors also have some authority to keep ownership and withhold their contributions from specific editors: "we can also set an option 'my edit not to be used by teamX' if a contributor feels that a team is not to be profiteering from his effort".

In addition to editing pages, "teams will be able to edit a collection of recent changes by marking which of them they consider ... worthy of ... attention". Editors can also record 'milestones' which will be preserved in the history: "milestones provide a nice balance: only versions marked as milestones by editorial teams are kept in the long-term history of wiki".

One surprising feature of WikiChangeProposal is that the links can take different users to different pages: "The hyperlinks can be un-anchored in which case the user will be taken to the "best-match" function that takes as input the page name, user's preferences and possibly the current state of the wiki..."

Another complex and suprising feature is the use of Scheme sexp for defining structured pages. Costin was "Trying to convince people to have structured data on all wikis... structured to begin with, and then ... addressable and queriable from outside".

Problems

One anonymous commentator said of the proposal "This page was lengthy initially, and has grown very long. I wouldn't support anything which isn't simple enough to be explained in just a few paragraphs."

There was concern about minority contributions being suppressed, though Costin said "there's nothing to prevent novel and innovative ideas gaining visibility - but only if they deserve to".

The ownership of teams was questioned: "an owner may attract people to work for his "team" and then relations can turn sour, in which case the result is a fairness problem".

WikiChangeProposal has been criticised for not having the 'workflow of a wiki', but Costin resolutely denies this, pointing out that the proposal has all the technology of a conventional wiki, and then some. Does this additional technology actually detract?

One commentator suggests the proposal would be a disaster, and that the competing teams are likely to become bitter rivals, because there can only be a single 'top' version: "What is proposed will result in all-out war between teams as one team tries its best to discredit another team's work and view." Dominant editorial teams will emerge, and with their editions at the top of the popularity list, they will receive more hits and more ratings: "It will mean the end of innovative ideas as it's designed to discredit anything that is not yet in the mainstream or as of yet published... It will result in an even more dead wiki with little-to-zero participation." By depriving minor contributors of an audience it will "kill the spur-of-the-moment creativity".

CategoryWikiChangeProposal