Francis Schonken

See en:user talk:Francis Schonken

Cormac Lawler Questionnaire

See: Research/Cormac Lawler questionnaire

1. When did you become aware of Wikipedia?
   1. Spring of 2004
2. When did you become involved in Wikipedia?
   1. Summer 2004
3. Why did you become involved in Wikipedia?
   1. At the time because I wanted to expand/improve articles relating to the Bloomsbury Group and to Erik Satie.
   2. With retrosprect: because of so many other reasons, ranging from addiction to getting interested in this sociologically completely new format, from mere interest in knowledge of any kind to the combination of diverse knowledge in a unified format, etc... (Really, if you asked me the most dominant of these reasons, I couldn't tell...)
4. Have you participated in another collaborative online community and, if so, how is it different?
   1. Although I helped mount an on-line forum at a certain point and was involved in a wiki before getting to know wikipedia, my participation in other collaborative online communities was low, until wikipedia happened. As for differences:
      1. Wikipedia differs from forum applications in having a less pyramidal power structure. Everybody can edit prior edits.
      2. Differs, in my view, from most other type of wikis in the combination of all the following: the NPOV concept, the thorough copyleft approach, the low treshold, the fact that everyone can help build the policies, the general application of consensus in all decision-making processes, the goal of writing an Encyclopedia.
5. How do you rate Wikipedia as a collaborative project, as compared to, say, slashdot or everything2?
   1. Don't know everything2. Compared to slashdot: I don't think of forum software like slashdot as less, but different. Every type of on-line interactive system should be used where it is most suitable (and I think slashdot very suitable for what it aims at). There's also a difference in what one feels the most at ease with: personally I feel much at ease with copyleft and with wiki (more at ease than with forum). The NPOV idea is what made it all possible, in my eyes, to trigger collaboration for an encyclopedia - in that persective wikipedia rates the highest as far as I know.
6. Comment on the nature of your involvement in Wikipedia, ie. is it mostly editing, monitoring, discussing, researching…?
   1. Over 2000 edits, of which:
      1. about 50% editing of encyclopedia articles - including some more than average involvement in categorisation.
      2. about 50% talk-page edits ("discussing" if you like), voting (e.g. en:wikipedia:categories for deletion), writing policy, and other indirect contributions to encyclopedia content. I try not to do more indirect contributions, than direct encyclopedia content, but am sometimes challenged in this respect.
   2. Made a choice not to become a sysop (partly irrational choice), so any monitoring I'd be doing is rather informal. I.e. I do monitor some articles (e.g. some of those to which I collaborated), but have, until know, never gotten caught in a revert war.
7. What features do you like/dislike about Wikipedia?
   1. like: see above. Also "history" feature, etc...
   2. dislike: having to subscribe separately for every language/wikimedia project. I heard this is going to change in one of the next releases of the software.
8. What features do you think are essential to Wikipedia?
   1. "Wiki" format
   2. NPOV
   3. copyleft
   4. ...all the rest sort of evolves from the above (...or is accessory).
9. What’s your opinion of Wikipedia’s contribution to society?
   1. making Encyclopedia content available in a very spread-out way.
   2. Maybe not yet so "visible", but to me at least not less important: a new form of making society.
10. What have you learnt from Wikipedia?
    1. Well, a lot, I suppose, e.g. where the word "caisson disease" comes from, etc... (but I suppose you're not just asking what encyclopedical knowledge I learnt) - I also learnt a lot of other things, e.g. that a wikipedia policy or guideline tends not to work if it is not self-regulating in one way or another, that wikipedia defies (succesfully!) some web-usability rules, etc...

(note:check "history" tab if you want to be sure I was the last to modify this page --Francis Schonken 17:36, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC))