Making More Wikipedias (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought) September 24, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , trackbackI would probably have voted for this candidate in the Wikimedia 2006 Elections except that I haven’t made 400 accredited Wikipedia edits to qualify as a voter.
Making More Wikipedias (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)
Building a community is pretty tough; it requires just the right combination of technology and rules and people. And while it’s been clear that communities are at the core of many of the most interesting things on the Internet, we’re still at the very early stages of understanding what it is that makes them work.
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If we take radical collaboration as our core, then it becomes clear that extending Wikipedia’s success doesn’t simply mean installing more copies of wiki software for different tasks. It means figuring out the key principles that make radical collaboration work. What kinds of projects is it good for? How do you get them started? How do you keep them growing? What rules do you put in place? What software do you use?
These questions can’t be answered from the armchair, of course. They require experimentation and study. And that, in turn, requires building a community around strong collaboration itself. It doesn’t help us much if each person goes off and tries to start a wiki on their own. To learn what works and what doesn’t, we need to share our experiences and be willing to test new things — new goals, new social structures, new software.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
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