Collaborate Radically
Larry Sanger, one of the people behind Wikipedia, observed that Wikipedia succeeds in part because of a set of factors. Here are two that we encourage on this wiki:- Collaborate radically; don't sign articles. Radical collaboration, in which (in principle) anyone can edit any part of anyone else's work, is one of the great innovations of the open source software movement. On Wikipedia, radical collaboration made it possible for work to move forward on all fronts at the same time, to avoid the big bottleneck that is the individual author, and to burnish articles on popular topics to a fine luster.
- Offer unedited, unapproved content for further development. This is required if one wishes to collaborate radically. We encouraged putting up their unfinished drafts--as long as they were at least roughly correct--with the idea that they can only improve if there are others collaborating. This is a classic principle of open source software. It helped get Wikipedia started and helped keep it moving. This is why so many original drafts of Wikipedia articles were basically garbage (no offense to anyone--some of my own drafts were sometimes garbage), and also why it is surprising to the uninitiated that many articles have turned out very well indeed. The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia, part II, Larry Sanger
~- Neutrality. A firm neutrality policy made it possible for people of widely divergent opinions to work together, without constantly fighting. It's a way to keep the peace.
Are we neutral here? No. Not in our work. Should be we? No. We're decorous but not so distant as to try to appear neutral. NeutralPOV has a discussion on this, and the StyleGuide explains our stance in more detail.
CategoryWikiHandbook
