Not Stability
Famously, Wikipedia isn’t a well-planned operation. Its salaried employees are massively outnumbered by tens of thousands of “editors” who, attracted by Wikipedia’s vision or irritated by its inaccuracies, take it upon themselves to contribute…
These contributing editors not only write articles, they also argue with each other. How should they describe controversial issues or track down hoaxes and errors? What should they do with ill-intentioned or chronically ill-behaved editors? How should they punctuate the movie title “Star Trek Into Darkness”?
Some pages urged users to be civil or to be neutral, for example, while others, written later, tried to understand what being civil, or being neutral, really meant. Some pages were concerned with truth, others with proper formatting (in case you’re wondering: Wikipedia is formally neutral on the Oxford Comma). Some talked about the importance of being polite, but others warned about how a preoccupation with politeness can undermine excellence…
One mistake I think we will avoid is the idea that social worlds evolve toward a stationary state. Whether we look inside parliament houses or web servers, we see dynamism and change: new ideas and unexpected logics of development. Some we may find silly, outdated, or even abhorrent. Others exciting, new, or perplexing.
When we study the complex patterns that emerge from human interaction, we find laws of invention, turmoil, and creation – not stability.