Wiki As Xp Training Course

For a month or two WikiSuccessCanInhibitNewWriters finished pretty much with the link to the brilliant WikiUncertaintyPrinciple. Then suddenly an [excellent, well thought out - but that's disputed and now deleted!] post from someone who is none too impressed with Wiki (see DiversityIsSmotheredOnWiki). It's worth looking again at the following portion I think ...

By the way, is there any topic on which RonJeffries is not a self-anointed expert? [My well-considered impression, after spending my first few hours here, is that Ron Jeffries is an arrogant asshole, and that his arrogance gets in the way of rationality -- his own and his correspondents and potential correspondents (those who withhold their comments because of the poisoned atmosphere. BTW, the homogenization of Wiki can be seen by the absence of even token variations in social practice -- such as this inserted comment. -- anonymous for now.] I see his comments on just about every Wiki page, and in every case he is handing down the gospel according to rj. I've never found a page on which he asks a question or in any other way shows any interest in anyone else's opinions (other than to judge their opinions and render a verdict: right opinion or wrong).

Me, I'm outta here. I've got better things to do than read the same mantras over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

This is going to be hard for both of us but I want to suggest another, more positive explanation for the ubiquity of RonJeffries in the Wiki canon.

When these pages were being 'handed down' Wiki became a very nearly real time XP training course - for most of the readers and perhaps sometimes even partly for Ron himself! His great enthusiasm and huge amount of time spent helping others (and it was genuine help for the world of software in my mind) earned him a special place in the hearts of those who were RecentChangesJunkie's at the time. My second Wiki post was to thank the guy for exactly these reasons (as I tried to patch up the reputation of TomGilb as a forgotten pioneer of some of the same ideas - see SoftwareCrafter).

It's an amazing strength of Wiki that it could have been such an effective day by day training medium for so many. The end result is not quite as refactored as one would like though - and certainly not as efficient as training material for new readers (like our valued contributor above) as it was for those at the time.

--RichardDrake