W9. Discuss Reagle's chapters 3 and 4 - Clément Chevallier

The lecture deals with the topic of openness. Indeed, Wikipedia is based on Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) and the catchphrase of the online encyclopedia is "Wiki, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit". So Wikipedia claims and points out its openness. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of openness?
Wikipedia defines itself as an open content community. An open content community is characterized by:
- open content;
-transparency & integrity: in other words engagement, explanation and clarity;
-nondiscrimination: all new users are always to be welcomed, all participants have legitimity;
-noninterference: importance of forking.

The most interesting point for me is to wonder if openess always causes anarchism? Indeed, the freedom to edit implies some abuses and vandalism. That's why Wikipedia implemented some measures to limit the possibility of vandalism without affecting the value of openness, as semi-protection pages and soft block IP numbers systems. These measures were criticized by a part of the community because from their point of view, it is a revision of "anyone can edit" policy. But policy is mandatory in any community to avoid anarchism. However, the quality, which is the main goal of Wikipedia, should not be sacrificied for the openness.

The lecture ends with the problems of sexism, misogyny and trolling. They are thorny issues for all online communities. But the author doesn't give real solutions. How to tackle these issues?

Clément Chevallier

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 5, 2018 at 2:09 AM

    I think tackle issues about sexism and misogyny is really difficult on the internet communities because you have to make the women who are discriminate to feel comfortable enough to continue to participate to these communities even if sometimes it can be hard for them. We saw that many women don't participate in Wikipedia because they are afraid to modify the work of someone else so in my opinion it is harder to make them participate more on the internet communities if they feel pressure and not welcomed.

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