User:Alanyst/Essays/Community Robustness Principle

In software, the robustness principle (or Postel's Law) is typically phrased as: "Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others."

In a network of diverse and independent actors, adherence to this principle indeed promotes robustness. What is robustness? It is the ability for actors in the network to maintain useful communications with other actors in spite of different ways the actors may produce, receive, and interpret those communications.

Now instead of computer networks, consider the network of Wikipedia users that we term the community. It is a network of diverse and independent actors. The broad goal of Wikipedia is for these actors to collaborate to build and maintain a vast online encyclopedia. Useful (constructive) communications are those that aid progress toward this goal. A robust network of Wikipedia users is one that encourages actors to maintain useful communications despite how they might phrase or interpret them. More concretely, a sign of a robust Wikipedia community is that the editors' communications with each other tend toward: Moreover, robustness means that these useful communications continue despite cultural misunderstandings, opposing perspectives, ambiguities of language, and all the frailties of online dialogue.
 * collaborative content building,
 * coordination of content maintenance and damage mitigation efforts, and
 * improvement of processes, systems, and policies that form the project's logical infrastructure and governance.

Applied to the Wikipedia community, the robustness principle is thus: "Be constructive in what you express to others; be tolerant of nonconstructive expressions of others towards you."

[Placeholder here for discussion of the principle in context of the inevitable bad actors: when to stop tolerating; being less tolerant when nonconstructive speech/behavior is directed at others and not oneself.]