Lessons from Usenet (Wikipedia)

Why is the story of Usenet and Netnews so important? Because so many things pioneered by Usenet have become foundations for the Wikipedia community and its resulting success.

If we fast-forward to Wikipedia today, much the same dynamic exists as did with Usenet. The power of Wikipedia’s model is that it is free-form—anyone can edit any page at any time. Contributors work on a micro-level, adding a fact here, changing punctuation there. The community trusts individuals to behave responsibly. Lessons learned from dealing with vandals, troublemakers, and noisy individuals in Usenet were applied by Wikipedia’s toolmakers and community members. Obnoxious users could be blocked from editing, and articles could be locked to prevent vandalism. And changes to whole sets of articles could be done through software robots, not unlike the Netnews Cancelbots.

Fortunately, though, as Wikipedia took off, the community found most people were remarkably well behaved and productive, something not everyone would have thought about a site that encouraged anyone to edit any page at any time.

"Generally we find most people out there on the Internet are good," says Jimmy Wales. "It’s one of the wonderful humanitarian discoveries in Wikipedia, that most people only want to help us and build this free nonprofit, charitable resource."28

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