A key reason institutional projects stall is that gatekeepers with veto power enjoy that doing nothing means nothing happens; Wikipedia's success came from NOT giving experts veto power—a deliberately simplistic article ('asphalt: material used to cover roads') triggers others to say 'I can do better,' so articles improve from a provisional seed rather than waiting indefinitely for the ideal expert.

causalpending

Speaker

Clay Shirky

Evidence Quote

one of the really big successes of Wikipedia was not to give veto power to experts

Source

Clay Shirky on Coase, Collaboration and Here Comes Everybody 10/20/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:59 AM

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