Less fun unavoidable consequence of greater political importance - Solution: democrazy

I would say that editing is less fun and can be a quite hard fought battle with lots of vandalism and all the other unpleasent side effects is unfortunately an unavoidable consequence of Wikipedia's success. Ten years ago, most people would just not have cared what is written in the wikipedia, and some idealistic geeks could life their collobarative dream of objective truth and NPOV here. Today that simply won't work anymore. Wikipedia became THE standard knowledge base of the internet, therefore defining its content became a political exercise (if you like it or not). People will have different opinions on topics and I only see three options for wikipedia to deal with it: 1) Wikipedia could just let "truth" be decided by no-rules street-fight (the one who is most persistent wins [in german we have a proverb: "the more intelligent person will concede" - not good news for wikipedia in this respect ;) ]; this might be one reason why so many people loss their interest in editing and probably also why so few women contribute). 2) Wikipedia closes itself and becomes more of meriocratic/autocratic/dictatorial system, which gives more powers to administrators, making some people more equal than others (might be one reason why less newcomers are willing to join, and will burden the more accomplished contributers with more burocrazy and generally being the nanny/policeman/judge/dictator is probably less fun than contributing oneself). 3) Wikipedia becomes more democratic. Critical questions will not be decided by edit-wars, but vote. Of course again one would need to have some sort of system giving some accountholders the right to vote (protecting from voters fraud), and protect the solution found by voting from being vandalised.

Currently, Wikipedia is trying a mixture of solutions 1 and 2. Is it working? Well, actually remarkably well. Will it be good enough for a future consensus knowledge base for all of humanity (not just some geek niche)? No, I do not believe so. The only real way forward I see is more democrazy, that is at least what history taught us. However, Wikipedia would of course have to let go of the NPOV ideology to make that possible.

I enjoyed reading your analysis. Points 1 and 2 are very good. Your alternative (point 3) is not so good. Democracy does not have anything to do with edit wars, education does. That's why "the more intelligent person will concede." On the other end, the tyranny of the majority may obliterate minority POVs which are given the utmost respect in any civilized democracy and community. I absolutely concur with you on the "need to have some sort of system giving some account holders the right to vote (protecting from voters fraud)" and need to fight vandalism (not necessarily to "protect the solution found by voting") wherever it may occur. I concur again when you state that "Wikipedia is trying a mixture of solutions 1 and 2." and what follows, until your last sentence: "Wikipedia would of course have to let go of the NPOV ideology to make that possible." There seems to be a contradiction between more democracy in the making of Wikipedia and "to let go of the NPOV ideology." I'll say that the exact opposite is true, but I'll leave it to you or any other interested editors to further pursue this matter.

Sincerely,

Virgilio A. P. Machado

Here is my analogy: wp:consensus = democracy, wp:npov = republic.

Interesting analogy. Mine would be wp:consensus = tyranny of the majority (please see lower in the page the large section in English), wp:npov = democracy (equality and freedom).