I am the editor Skomorokh, a dilettante Anglophile of no clique or faction. A personal favourite characterisation of Wikipedia is wikispeak's definition of an article as "a motley collection of boring, vague lies". Wikipedia is nevertheless by a vast distance the single greatest collection of knowledge in the history of mankind, compiled in only one decade in the spare time of an odd assortment of bored housewives, autistic teenagers and failed grad students. Not to find inspiration and dread in this is to display a lack of imagination. I am here, with the intermittent good fortune of being overeducated and underemployed, in the hopes of contributing something that someone will one day find edifying. A selection of those attempts follows:
The better part of the above were written earlier in my editorial career. Of late, afflicted by namespace drift and declining pristine areas of interest, and convinced of the idea that healthy mass-collaborations are dependent on effective, legitimate, and respected institutions to thrive, I have devoted my time to sustaining them, as an OTRS agent, a lead co-ordinator of successive Arbitration Committee Elections, and most recently as managing editor of the Signpost. I am here to make neither friends nor enemies, and am loath to squander time on personal disputes. I may not take myself seriously, but I do take my work seriously.
Some rather unfinished thoughts on project dynamics:
The Internet is strange.
It doesn't make any money.
It is transnational, beyond anyone's control.
It is the great anarchist event.
· Some very bad ideas
· Chokepoint: why reform of Wikipedia is so difficult.
· Jumping the gun: on the dysfunction of trigger-happy justice.
· The first rule of dispute resolution: discuss before you dramatise.
· Vandalism does not matter: but its effect on our culture does.
· The Man behind the Curtain: there is no conspiracy responsible for the ills of this encyclopaedia.
· Farsight: wise words for the long view.
In parting, the directive of Lichtenberg:
The detection of small errors has always been the property of minds elevated little or not at all above the mediocre; notably elevated minds remain silent or say something only in criticism of the whole, while the great spirits refrain from censuring and only create.
