The Promise of Collaborative Magic
summary
Argues that Wikipedia’s original “wiki magic” — bold seed edits that others finish — is breaking: contributor count peaks around 50k then declines, policy text swells to about 150,000 pages of policy, and deletion nominations target long‑standing Philippine bank articles despite notability. Describes stalled feature review for the Manila metro, uses deletion as leverage rather than repair, and surveys fixes already tried elsewhere (Polish/German flagging, a Tea House for newcomers, rotating reps) while asking whether bureaucracy or community values should change.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:58Why collaborative magic
- 9:00Wiki magic explained
- 18:17Wiki magic failure
- 25:46Wikipedia’s decline
- 27:56Reclaiming open source magic
- 31:51Open source key questions
- 49:23Open discussion and audience engagement
related talks
48mFailure and Wikipedia: how encyclopedias work
19mWhy Relationships Matter in Community Building...
27mThe bots that help run Wikipedia
10mLightning Talk: How Not to Make Open Source - Lessons Learned
41mWikiLoop: Big Tech's Open Knowledge contributions
10mStarting Online Communities: Motivations and Goals of Wiki Founders
29mWhat is LocalWiki, and why is it so much fun? Let's edit it!
31mUsing the Commons without causing a tragedy
