Wiki Community

Wiki Community is more like our human world - open to change, which is the spice of life. The changes may be good or evil, depending on one's viewpoint, but only the most suitable will prevail. This is what nature is all about. -- Raj

A bunch of human beings communicating via a shared notepad. Nothing to do with a WikiMind, whatever that might be.

A different view: the Wiki Community consists of all collaborating (human or non-human) WikiAgents. -- FridemarPache

ClayShirky has a very interesting article on the difference between communities and audiences. The quickie summary is: audiences scale, communities don't.

See http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

On Participation

From ClayShirky's Web pages: "communities have strong upper limits on size, while audiences can grow arbitrarily large."

The WikiCommunity, however is not composed of each and every member interacting on each and every point. Since interaction is possible by every member on every page, but is practiced by only about 1/70th of the members on a limited number of the pages, the potential of the community is greater than one might think.

The WikiCommunity is composed of audiences as well as participants. Taking that into consideration, it can be said that while communities don't scale, audiences and wikis do.

WikiReaders , people who read but do not contribute, need to be recognised as "extended family". Their "invisible and indirect" support enable WikiZens to engage in BarnRaising activities.

A most striking example is WikiPedia, a much larger community access it than the few who labored through its content and presentation. And without the encouragement from the larger community, WikiPedia RegularContributors would wither away.

See BotWar for an example of the WikiCommunity at work.

CategoryWiki CategoryCommunity