Charter/Terms

We are here met for a political object, and discussion involves political terms, many of which may be unfamiliar to those with predominantly technical backgrounds.

Politics is a complex subject and an old one, and much has been written about its practice and the establishment of political communities. Perhaps some good general sources should be listed here.

The topic of emergent politics and large group dynamics within online communities is a new one; it is only recently that any online community or and eng:group entity grew big enough, long enough, to display these dynamics.

Glossary

Here's a quick glossary of political terms. Anyone with the willingness might work to link these to Wiktionary or other good sources.

politics, or politics as usual 

"the art of the possible"; how humans organize their communities

convention 

assembly of individuals who meet to establish a charter or other foundation issues; tends to be very large

party 

group within a convention who are agreed on a platform and work together to advance it; usually a large fraction of convention members

caucus 

group within a convention who seek to find a common ground on some issues; often quite small

platform 

political agenda or plan of action

plank 

element, section, or clause of a platform

charter 

foundation document which controls all other documents, rules, and procedures governing a eng:group entity; sometimes constitution

External links

As time and energy permit, please pull this material out and put it on distinct subpages of Charter/Sources/.

• Reputation management
  • Shirky:A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy
  • Slashdot-Wikipedia Reaches Half a Million Articles
  • Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger,
  • ...it may be the case that we have to figure out how to make the Wikipedia good, because that’s all there’s going to be. (death of the paper encyclopedia)
  • Introducing reputation for contributors or articles is the greatest risk to the Wikipedia community.
  • Jimbo Wales at Stanford, February 2005
  • Metawiki:Article validation
  • ...to scale further a reputation system may be required for this network...
  • (First Monday) Phantom Authority
  • (First Monday) Manifesto for the Reputation Society
  • meatball:GetARoom, meatball:ConflictParadox, meatball:CommunitySolution, meatball:RewardReputation vs. meatball:DissuadeReputation
• Mudslinging Weasels into Online History -- Written by committee, political entries get nasty, Wiki Wars and LivingPlatform.CA vs. GPC-LP - some case studies of actual politics as usual becoming tied up with wiki politics. Worth detailed review, and suggesting a need for a polity to start to deal with inherent political differences AS such.
• The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia - Part I, Part II by co-founder Larry Sanger - Quotes: ""Force of personality" might be enough to make a small group of people hang together; for better or worse, however, clearly enunciated rules are needed to make larger groups of people hang together." - "Indeed, consider making a project charter to make it clear from the beginning what the basic principles governing the project will be."