Craig Newmark (02 Dec 2009), “Wikipedia at a Turning Point”, Huffington Post

Wikipedia really is the "first draft of history" and more than that, maybe a vital part of how our species is working together for the common good. …

Been there. Done that.

The only thing that will come out of the WMF's Strategic Planning Process is one Strategic Press Release after another.

— Jon Awbrey, 03 Dec 2009, 11:52 PM

Wikipedia is not so much the "first draft of history" as the cribbed book report that your dog ate.

Maybe when your reporters dig a little deeper than recycled press releases from the Wikimedia Foundation itself they'll have something to tell us that we didn't already know better than to believe 5 years ago.

It's a bumpy read, indeed, but you might try doing a little of the required homework at The Wikipedia Review.

— Jon Awbrey, 04 Dec 2009, 8:36 AM

The above blurb is mostly just a scraping from the following blogicle:
Barry Newstead of the Bridgespan Group (01 Dec 2009), “Wikipedia's Community Is at an Infection Point”, Harvard Business Blog

The decline in the growth of Wikipedia's community is not because of increased rules and regulations, but instead the lack of them. Wikipedia's "marshmallow governance" means that in order to get much done, you have to spend ridiculous amounts of time mastering Wikipedia's profoundly complicated social system. If you fail to do this, there's a very good chance your authorial efforts will be in vain because someone else with better connections will simply wipe them, and you, off the map. Most of the people who might contribute to Wikipedia don't want to take the time to master the social system (or even realize they have to), so they end up with profoundly negative experiences early on in their short careers, and leave quickly as a result.

If Wikipedia had more firm rules, rules that could be learned in a short time, and that contributors could count on to be followed by everyone, then casual contributors (who, in general, are likely to be willing to work within the framework established by those rules) would be less likely to run into negative social experiences early in their careers.

However, Wikipedia is governed by people who not only do not particularly care either about the quality of the encyclopedia or the quality of the experience of casual editors, but in fact enjoy spending many hours of every day engaged in hideously complicated social maneuvering. For them, the intricate, twisty political game of manipulating others within the Wikipedia community is their hobby, and they are not going to give it up lightly. And since they have control, they don't have to.

The net result of all this is to limit the people who remain in Wikipedia to a handful of groups, which do not individually or collectively represent a meaningful cross-section of human culture or human knowledge. Wikipedia's content is thus biased both in selection (what gets written about) and in content (what is actually written) by the effects of the selection pressures that Wikipedia's community places upon its authors.

If Wikipedia wants to "move to the next level", it needs to resolve these problems. However, I have yet to see any significant degree of understanding among most of Wikipedia's significant personages that these problems exist (in fact, they are often touted as its greatest strengths).

Uh … that should be "infLection point".

Yeah, it's infected, but still.

Here's the comment I wrote for the Harvard Business blog.

Here's the comment I wrote for the Harvard Business blog.

Looks like they still haven't posted [Kelly's] (or my) comment. I wonder if they're censoring discussion, or we just haven't reached their weekly "office hours" yet at Harvard.