维基将死？

以下中文翻译转自博客中文翻译。

博客圈近来有个争论，起因是Nichole Carr写文章宣称“维基百科将死”。（是的，我的回应有点慢，不过当时我在旅途中没时间写。）他最初发表的文章就让我吃了一惊，说是维基百科就要完蛋了，因为0.01%的文章都被适当地保护起来了。这么说的意思就好像镇上请了个警察，民主就终结了。

他陆续发表的文章进一步说明了他的理由。Carr的观点是说维基百科的完全开放是虚幻的，从来就不是事实。大家应该摆脱这种虚幻来讨论其造成的影响。

这样的讨论我觉得有点意思（还有点娱乐）。因为，和我的读者们一样，我对维基的熟悉不是一天半天了。他们就是软件开发社区里出来的东西。很多的我碰到的团队，ThoughtWorks内或者外的，都用它来进行沟通，并形成集体的笔记。

还记得很多年前，Ward邀我一起加入他的一个实验，一个讨论模式的合作空间－最初的维基。在90年代末我是那儿的常客，那时Ward的维基成为了极限编程的讨论中心。

Ward 的维基曾是，我了解到仍然是，完全开放的维基。任何人，任何时候，可以编辑任何的页面。连注册和登陆都不需要－唯一留下的痕迹的是你的IP 地址。早期的维基没有版本控制－就象是块白板。没人负责维护或者编辑。Ward告诉我说有时他会去做点“修剪”的工作，但人人尽知仅是非常轻微的编辑而 已。

出来的东西整个成了大杂烩。会有一些不错的总结的页面，但大多数页面常常是长篇大论，天马行空。然而结果是：相比当初Ward把概念解释给我时我的想像，它要有趣并且有用得多。不说别的，至少它把极限编程介绍给了很多早期的接受者，是他们使极限编程从启蒙发展到发扬光大。

所以相对Carr维基百科的虚幻，我对维基百科的兴趣在于相比Ward的维基，它有多少的结构和控制。可以看到的是页面按文章和讨论区分，版本控制，用户注册，监视列表，仲裁委员会－这是和Ward的486完全不同的。

但是这样的结构管用。维基百科相比Ward的维基是有用得多的资源。把讨论和文章页面分开看来效果不错。编辑们会注意保持文章都是相关的。整体说维基百科已被证明是有用的资源－从那些我知道的东西来看它也还是比较准确的。

尽 管相比发源于俄勒冈的创始维基，维基百科显得封闭一些，但它仍然本质上是不同的－ 甚至是开放的－ 比较很多其他的在它之前出来的维基。任何人可以编辑99.9%的页面－不包括编辑们自己的页面。我确信任何人都可以很容易地修改大多数页面上的拼写错误。 但是如果需要对页面进行实质性的改变就会有编辑来问问你为什么了。有趣的是这样的控制都是在已经既成事实以后的。你在开始更改页面时无须经过允许，而是你 在做完了以后，有可能要进行调整。这对许多人来说是个很大的观念上的改变，尤其是习惯了公司环境的人。

然而我们的社会却是按事后控制 的法则来运转的。 比方说我早晨开上I93号公路逆行，几乎不会遭到什么阻止，但是假设我这么做了是会有后果的。当然也会有措施防止发生糟糕的问题，但大多数时候更宽松一 些，并且明了违规的后果，这样效率会比较高。在Thoughtworks我们就遵循这样的原则，给人们相比大多数组织要多得多的自由 －但会去跟进哪些人滥用了系统。

敏捷软件运动很多时候都在要求更加放松控制，不要事事都要经过允许，而是更多地向事后的请求原谅转变 。但松弛的控制不等同于无政府状态和没有控制－通常对敏捷主义者也有这么一个错误的认识。 它实际上是在想怎样尽可能少地控制，才不会断送我们要避免错误的良好意愿。

以下是英文原文，转自Martin Fowler’s bliki。

A recent blogosphere controversy was caused by Nicholas Carr’s entry claiming the "death of wikipedia" (yes I know my response is slow, but I didn’t have the time to write while on the road). His initial post struck me as rather odd, saying that wikipedia was dying because 0.01% of articles had a rather mild protection. It’s like saying democracy is over when a town hires a policeman.

His follow-on article helped explain where he was coming from. Carr’s view was that wikipedia had a myth of complete openness that was never really true, and that we need to get beyond this myth to really discuss its impact.

I’m finding this discussion interesting (and a tad amusing I’ll admit) because, like many of my readers, I’ve been familiar with wikis for a long time. They’ve come out of the software development community. Many teams that I run into, inside and outside ThoughtWorks, use them to communicate and build up collective notes.

I remember many years ago when Ward came up to me and invited me to take part in his experiment of a collaborative space to discuss patterns - the original wiki. I was an active reader during the late 90’s as Ward’s wiki became the central point for articulating Extreme Programming.

Ward’s wiki was, and I gather still is, a completely open wiki. Anyone edited any page at any time. There wasn’t even logging and registering - the only trace you left was your IP address. The early wiki had no version control - which really did make it a whiteboard. Nobody took on maintaining or editing anything. Ward told me he did the occasional spot of ‘gardening’, but only with his famously light touch.

The result was a complete mish-mash. There were some good pages summarizing stuff, most pages had long discussions, which often went nowhere. Still the result was way more interesting, and useful than I thought it would be when Ward first explained the concept to me.If nothing else it introduced Extreme Programming to many early adopters who took it beyond its initial roots.

So in contrast to Carr’s wikipedia myth, my interest in wikipedia lies in how much structure and control it has in contrast to Ward’s wiki. I see pages separated into article and discussion, version control, user registration, editors with watch lists, arbitration committees - it’s all very different to Ward’s 486.

Yet this structure has worked. Wikipedia is a far more useful resource than Ward’s wiki. Keeping the discussion separate to the article page seems to work really well. Editors care about keeping coherent articles. All in all the wikipedia has proved a useful resource - comparing it to things I know about it’s reasonably accurate.

But despite it’s closedness compared the Oregonian original, wikipedia is still distinctively different - even open - compared to much else that’s come before it. Anyone can edit 99.99% of the pages - but doesn’t mean edits stick. I’m sure anyone can easily fix a typo on pretty much any page. But make a substantial change to a page and an editor will be asking you why. The interesting thing is that this is all after the fact control. There’s no permission you have to get to change a page before you begin, instead you have to justify what you’ve done afterward. That’s a big shift to many people, particularly in the corporate world.

Yet of course we as a society live off after the fact controls. There’s little that really stops me driving down the wrong side of I93 in the morning, yet there would be consequences should I do such a thing. Certainly there are places where it’s necessary to prevent bad things from being possible, but in many cases it’s more efficient to be much looser but know there’s a consequence to any breach. We try to follow that principle at ThoughtWorks, leaving people with lots more latitude than in most organizations - but then following up with those who abuse the system.

Much of the agile software movement is about loosening controls, shifting more to asking forgiveness rather than permission. Yet loosening controls isn’t the same as anarchy and no control - a misrepresentation that’s commonly thrown at agilists too. It’s about asking how we can use a minimum of controls, so that that we don’t suffocate the good in our desire to protect ourselves from the bad.