<CPOV> the culture of tech/tech or culture?

[Geert Lovink]

Hi CPOV,

I was a bit behind because of the holidays season here in Eurostan but  
now I finally worked my way through these two interesting documents:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals

There is a more general text on the proposed changes by Brandon Harris  
on The Signpost of August 6 2012:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-08-06/Op-ed

Brandon writes:

"I'm certain many people are asking, "Why do we need a change? Why is  
this important?" Simply put: the software is a barrier and it is  
dragging you down."

If I think of the problems of Wikipedia along the lines of the CPOV  
research over the past years, I see a lot of cultural and political  
issues. Are they now resolved and can the outcome now be translated  
into technical solutions, new interfaces etc? I wonder. Yes, the  
Wikimedia software is ten years old and hasn't changed much. But is it  
dragging us down? I would say that engineering-male-Western culture  
inside Wikipedia is dragging us down, the organized and systematic  
arrogance and hostile attitudes towards newcomers, that's what is  
dragging Wikimedia/Wikipedia down.

What do you think? Are good intentions on the tech level enough?

Ciao, Geert