The idea of RadicalInclusiveness is that we should try to be inclusive to everyone who shows up and wants to participate.
It seems likely that there are times when a wiki should practice RadicalInclusiveness, and times when a wiki should not practice RadicalInclusiveness.
If a semi-open community is the “canonical” place for any type of activity, it will be hard for it to embrace any policy other than RadicalInclusiveness. This is because people interested in that activity will experience a strong pull to become a part of that community, regardless of other factors.
If a canonical wiki decides not to be open, and separates itself from a significant population, it is likely to lose its status as “canonical.” (Correction: It’s still canonical, but as in: the canonical place to discuss XYZ from the ABC point of view.)
If a canonical wiki truly wants to be the one place to discuss something, then it must practice RadicalInclusiveness.
See ModerateInclusiveness
Case: Wikipedia
LarrySanger wrote on SlashDot, talking about the rapid growth of Wikipedia in 2001:
- This growth brought difficult challenges, challenges that perhaps I did not sufficiently anticipate and plan for. Some of our earliest contributors were academics and other highly-qualified people, and it seems to me that they were slowly worn down and driven away by having to deal with difficult people on the project. I hope they will not mind that I mention their names, but the two that stick in my mind are J. Hoffman Kemp and Michael Tinkler, a couple of Ph.D. historians. They helped to set what I think was a good precedent for the project in that they wrote about their own areas of expertise, and they contributed under their own, real names. The latter has the salutary effect of making the contributor more serious and more apt to take responsibility for his or her contributions. They are also very nice people, but did not “suffer fools gladly,” as the phrase goes. Consequently, they wound up in some pretty silly disputes that would have driven less patient people away instantly. So there was a growing problem: persistent and difficult contributors tend to drive away many better, more valuable contributors; Kemp and Tinkler were only two examples. There were many more who quietly came and quietly left. Short of removing the problem contributors altogether--which we did only in the very worst cases--there was no easy solution, under the system as we had set it up. And I am sorry to have to admit that those aspects of the system that led to this problem were as much my responsibility as anyone else’s. Obviously, I would not design the system the same way if given the chance again. [1]
See UseRealNames, DifficultPerson.
Later on he goes on to talk about a community needing a charter. See CorporateMembership for more.
Discussion
It may be that RadicalInclusiveness is a good strategy, when applied to the Internet as a whole. It is sort of related to the idea that, there should be a place for everything (TooFewWiki), or that there should be an OnTopic place for every conversation, etc.,. – LionKimbro
The Wikipedia example may not work for us though. They are building an Enclyclopedia. The focus is not so much on people and ideas, but on putting a product together for use. So it is a worker community. MarkDilley
See also
CategoryWikiProcess CategoryConflict