Jimmy Wales's Open Source Collaboration Tips

destinyland writes "In a new interview Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales acknowledges his debt to Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation and discusses his new open source search project. He applauds the way Open Source developers work around their ideological differences, acknowledges that he's an Ayn Rand objectivist who's skeptical of the wisdom of crowds, and blames Slashdot for his grandstanding comment that Wikipedia would bury Encyclopedia Brittanica within five years."

Comments

Two more

[Apotsy]

Here's a couple you won't see mentioned:

• Oust your co-founder and start claiming that you are the sole founder. It's okay if your organization's own past press releases contradict what you are now saying. No one will notice!
• Claim that the majority of work is done by a group of people who actually don't really contribute that much.

I'm sure there's more.

Claim that anyone who isn't in the groupthink

[Moryath]

is a "troll."

Advocate banning "trolls" whenever possible, especially when they threaten to expose malfeasance on the part of your worst employees.

Call one of your detractors a "disease" in your IRC channels, then deny you said it (even though it was logged) and create an entire "biography" on the person devoted solely to libeling them, in violation of publication laws and your own "standards" for biographical entries.

Suggest in your logged, publicly available email lists for the project that "lone wolves" should start filing dishonest "complaints" with the hosting ISP against a site critical of your behavior.

Take the money donated for "the project" and build a new house with it.

Re:Ayn Rand? The fan dancer?

[WilliamSChips]

Altruism is doing something that benefits other people when you only indirectly benefit from it. That describes 90% of Wikipedia contributions. Personal pleasure doesn't even enter into it, and can't, because unless you're under coercion you are always doing things for some sort of personal pleasure. Actually even if you're under coercion it's usually the pleasure of a lack of pain.