Wikipedia and organizational structure
Advocates of Enterprise 2.0 have a tremendous amount of passion. Why? Being one of them, I believe it has something to do with the possibility of changing organizational culture from hierarchical to more community oriented (e.g., knowledge sharing, “groundswell”). Sometimes E2.0 advocates forget the value of hierarchy, especially as organizations mature. There is a good article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the shift in organizational culture at the poster-child for “groudswell” and the “wisdom of crowds”, Wikipedia:
Volunteers have been departing the project that bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” faster than new ones have been joining, and the net losses have accelerated over the past year. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier, according to Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega, who analyzed Wikipedia’s data on the editing histories of its more than three million active contributors in 10 languages.
Wikipedia contributors have been debating widely what is behind the declines in volunteers. One factor is that many topics already have been written about. Another is the plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe — particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures.
The article has a negative spin, but it’s not surprising that Wikipedia had to eventually take steps to protect existing content by installing more controls, and that some people wouldn’t like that. What I take away from the story is a reminder that as organizations mature, hierarchy has value. Certainly not a new trend… a start-up company functions much differently from a General Electric…but it’s an interesting trend to witness in the context of Wikipedia, and a reminder that as traditional enterprises adopt lessons from consumer Web 2.0 tools, tried and true methods of organizational management have their place as well.
Direct Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html
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