There has been lately some noise about the transformations of the organization behind Wikipedia, and in particular how the ecosystem of volunteers is changing dramatically, and not necessarily for the best – shrinking considerably, becoming more closed, more conservative and defensive of established positions.
An excellent article on the matter – although a bit long – appeared in the MIT technology review: ‘ The Decline of Wikipedia‘.
Wikipedia can be considered as an interesting experiment of unstructured organizations that will be increasingly typical of the Collaboration Age. And the way the Wikipedia foundation reacts to the challenge – by changing the software platform that supports this collaboration in a way that conforms to its goals and interests – is an interesting management response to this problem. Instead of dealing with people in the organization, they act on the very platform that supports their activity!
All in all, in spite of all the issues described in the recent studies on the Wikipedia phenomenon, it seems more that Wikipedia is maturing as an organization rather than a fundamental crisis. Faced with increased bureaucracy it needs to reinvent itself to achieve a stable and sustainable model. And it still needs, and will continuously need, a lot of editing as the cartoon on the left suggests!
Let’s continue to watch Wikipedia and how it faces its challenges to learn how to make the self-organizing communities of the Collaborative Age work better.
