FamilySearch Wiki:Accuracy and Collaboration: Difference between revisions

Wikipedia was developed in this way, and it works. You'd think a bunch of volunteers couldn't build a site which rivals the accuracy of Encyclopedia Britannica, but they've done it. Many eyeballs make any bug shallow. We are smarter than me.  

Wiki pages evolve thousands of times faster than paper publications, static Websites, or multimedia presentations. Some folks within large organizations (like the LDS Family History Department) desire a "single sourcing" model where content can be written in one place and distributed to these other media formats. Some even want the content to be authored first in XML and only then transferred to the wiki and other media. This reflects a misunderstanding of the speed at which a wiki evolves. As a wiki matures and its number of contributors reaches critical mass, its content iterates very rapidly and its quality comes to rival that of formal paper publications. At that point, the wiki becomes the tool of choice for anyone who wants current, accurate content. Since authors can contribute to a wiki anytime, they find themselves using it as their information repository. Since the community tends to iterate content 24/7, an author can post a new article on Pet Topic X and let the community improve it while he sleeps. Months later, when the author is assigned to write a paper publication, static Webpage, or multimedia presentation on the topic, he finds the content already updated, ready and waiting on the wiki. To an author, the wiki experience is like having a whole team of research assistants. So it makes sense to write on the wiki first where the content will attract edits from the community, and then roll the content to other media formats when necessary.  

Writers accustomed to a command-and-control publishing paradigm are sometimes challenged in transitioning to a community paradigm. We can learn a lot from Wikipedia. In Wikipedia, the only types of content that are “protected,” or locked against community editing, are those which are highly controversial or those which tend to attract vandals. For instance, articles on the Gaza Strip might be protected due to persistent battles between Palestinian and Israeli authors. On FamilySearch Wiki, we may choose to protect a page on Mormon research if we find anti-Mormon vandalism becomes a persistent issue. We will do the same for other topics which may draw major controversy. But 99% of the pages on FamilySearch Wiki won't need this type of protection.