I was a little sad today to see a complaint on a user page about a change I had made on a Wikitravel page. The Wikitraveller said, "I would like to [change the page in the future] in a more democratic way, even if Evan had good reasons for it." I couldn't help thinking to myself, "If someone has a good reason, and plunges forward and does the right thing, isn't that the Wiki Way?"
I think the word that stuck with me is "democratic". The more I thought about it, the more I realized that wiki has little to do with democracy per se, and more to do with do-ocracy. Do-ocracy, or the similar term "do-opoly" (which more clearly puns on the word duopoly), is an organizational method in which people in a group self-select roles and responsibilities and simply do the jobs that need being done. Overhead is minimal, conflict is rare, and stuff that needs doing finds a person to do it.
I thought it was an interesting enough principle to write up an article on DoOcracy for CommunityWiki. CW is a great site for wiki theorists and community activists; I'm proud to be part of the CW community.
tags: wikitravel democracy wiki doocracy do-ocracy do-opoly communitywiki cw
Second Look
Speaking of CW, I was inspired by Lion's experience with Second Life, which was much more creatively rewarding than mine (see Journal/12 Messidor CCXIV). See CW's SecondLife article for a first-person account of Lion's building adventures. I might have to give SL another try.
tags: secondlife sl lion kimbro cw