[FM Discuss] Scaling the FLOSS scope and community (was: whats going on...)

[Andy Oram]

I hope no one minds a bit more speculation about the idea I tossed out
earlier, that FLOSS Manual could be a place for people to go
automatically like Wikipedia. I just wanted to suggest that people who
suddenly come to the realization, "We need to write a good web page on
such-and-such a topic" may turn as a first resort to FLOSS Manuals,
just as they now turn as a first resort to Wikipedia. And
correspondingly, people looking for information may come to FLOSS
Manuals first. (Particularly if we do good SEO -- half a :)

Ed pointed out that Wikibooks is a better comparison than Wikipedia.
Yes, if you're talking about format (comparing books to books). I
haven't explored the subtleties of formats and differences between the
various Wiki* sites. I wasn't trying to tie down format issues; I was
just referring to Wikipedia because it's a first stop for so many
people.

My original observation was prompted by a post by Adam suggesting that
FLOSS Manuals was broadening and becoming a site for smaller or more
unusual formats, not just manuals. I don't know whether I've said it
before, but I always thought it was a bit retro to use the word
"Manuals" in the name.

Furthermore, ever since "How to Bypass Internet Censorship" we've come
to learn that the site can host books on other topics besides
conventional technical ones such as Audacity. A site devoted to
freedom of information and worldwide cooperation will prove attractive
for many topics.

Actually, my reason for posting (I hope people were patient enough to
get this far!) was to describe what our magic is and how it compares
to Wikipedia. The format (books or whatever) is not what I find
interesting.

Wikipedia is not a community site. A lot of pages can be cooperatively
administered, and some are probably maintained by a handful of fans.
I'm impressed by how many people contribute even to topics that are
pretty arcane (for instance, researching some genetic stuff, I've been
reading pages such as Mitosis and Prokaryote, which have over half a
dozen contributors). But there's a point where the quantity of
contributors exceeds the size of a manageable community (and that's a
lot fewer than 100 or 150 or whatever the commonplace number is).

Wikipedia is successful because it has found formal mechanisms to
manage contributions in the ABSENCE of a feeling of community. The
cooperation you find on Mitosis and Prokaryote is about as far as
possible from the way entries on the Palestinian state or Barack Obama
are handled.

FLOSS Manuals is different because we start with the community. Almost
anyone who dares to touch a book comes to the list to ask permission
first. (Is that true? It feels that way to me.) People are expected
first to join a community and accept its jurisdication; then they edit
the book.

It would be interesting to see how far this ethos can scale, and what
we'd have to do to keep this cooperative, community approach going as
it scales dramatically.

Andy