Barriers to Quality at Wikipedia (and potentially other Wiki projects)

No, there's not a way to set it up so that only additive content is allowed. Wikis are about allowing people to edit and not restricting editing. They're about the community as a whole writing a better article than one person.  :)

Philippe

I do understand how wiki's work. I am trying to understand if Wiki's can be used as additive discussion boards where the information is better organized and easier to load, i.e. less computer resource intensive, and thus perhaps more productive that the LT type of forum.

It has been tossed around that content may need to be locked at some point after it is authored and edited. That led me to believe that a strategic planning wiki may have the capability of being partially locked and being edited.

The point of the type of wiki I am talking about IS about MANY people contributing. I think you are not understanding what I have been proposing. If someone can contribute, like on LT, but the content is then uneditable, the wiki/LT becomes a cummulative "idea sheet" rather than a place where someone posts an idea and it might disappear or become changed because someone did not agree, did not like it or wanted to refine it. to How about, instead of editing capabilities on a strategy wiki, people could comment on that in an outline level on a wiki? that would take away the ponderous nature of LT that many of us are not liking and would allow us to better organize and more easily organize our thoughts. It would also leave a "trail" that was not in history, making it easier for non-wiki-warriors to see all the information without reading through code.

I am TRYING to put in place some procedures right here and now to test their usability prior to making recommendations of new ways to work to improve quality on Wikipedia. It seems to me that this would be a really good place to try some things out. I would really like to start seeing people thinking outside the box, as cliche as that is, to put themselves in other peoples' shoes to get a better understanding of what the non-wiki-warrior experience is like and how we might improve the experience to attract and retain those Wikipedia NEEDS to progress.

I am identifying a problem I keep running into. Wikipedia wants contributions, it wants strategic reocmmendations, it wants us to work to make things better. But it seems that every time I propose something that isnt currently part of the Wikipedia culture or might be an experiment someone pushes back at me and says "no, that isnt the way we do it here." Well if what Wikipedia DID HERE was so successful then we wouldnt be having these strategic task forces. So how about someone says YES to me once in a while instead of NO. I am very tired of hearing NO. I am just like all of the other new users who get "pissed off" on Wikipedia. After a while of hearing NO I will start to think that my contributions have no value, that the system really isnt interested in change and that Wikipedia is just a bunch of young single guys with nothing better to do that to write content for an encyclopedia whose approach and interface is already outdated. The fact that I have to get outraged is not a good sign. Outrage is NOT my M.O. it is what i USE to push appropriate change.

If I am going to get outraged, I can meet with Mayor Heidi Davidson about not enough handicapped parking spaces in Athens and my time might be better spent.

Please do nor write me any placating emails or posts. DO SOMETHING ABOUT the fact that it seems all I am hearing is NO's.

And by the way, I still assert that you do not give an otherwise untested technology, i.e. LT, which is time consuming, clunky and inappropriate, to a strategic group charged with fixing things. I don't think it is an issue of "eating our own dog food." I think it is an issue of if you want a quarterback to do a good job, you give him good shoes and good gloves. It just took 30 seconds for LT to give me a page preview.

btw, I just waited another forty seconds for the page to save and refresh from adding the prior post. I am on a Dell Mini 10 which is my road warrior take anywhere laptop, lightweight, incredible battery life. This is the future. Smaller, less powerful computers, rather than larger more powerful computers. How can/does Wikipedia satisfy the Quality needs of users who are not using dual or quad processor systems with a ton of RAM? Why should I have to wait almost a minute for a page refresh on a project where I am contributing as a volunteer? What incentive to do I have to continue to work when the actual process of contributing is so cumbersome it makes me want to shut my computer and get a cup of coffee?

Someone say YES, that this issue matters, and fix it so we can have a more effective platform to contribute on.