Ward Cunningham: Quotes about people

Ward Cunningham is American computer programmer who developed the first wiki. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Ward Cunningham: 138   quotes 0   likes

“My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)
Context: My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people. Tradition in the work world has been more top down, while wiki, standing for the Internet, is becoming a model for a new way of work. Largely driven by reduced communication costs, it changes what needs to be done and how it’s going to get done. I hope that the wiki nature, if not the wiki code, makes some contribution.

People , Hope , Way

“Anonymity relieves refactoring friction. Have learned that people want to sign things. But try to write in a way where you don’t have to know who said it.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)
Context: Anonymity relieves refactoring friction. Have learned that people want to sign things. But try to write in a way where you don’t have to know who said it. But when someone who is not in a giving mood uses anonymity (spammers), that abuse can drive us away from anonymity. But I hope we can drive the ill-intended out without having to give up the openness.

People , Way , Learning

“People can and do trust works produced by people they don’t know. The real world is still trying to figure out how Wikipedia works.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)
Context: People can and do trust works produced by people they don’t know. The real world is still trying to figure out how Wikipedia works. A fantastic resource. Open source is produced by people that you can’t track down, but you can trust it in very deep ways. People can trust works by people they don’t know in this low communication cost environment.

People , World

“The blogosphere is a community that might produce a work. Whereas a wiki is a work that might produce a community. It’s all just people communicating.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

People , Communication

“People who understand their collective goals and values are pretty good at self-organizing -- as long as they are allowed to.”

Ward Cunningham

Podcast Interview with Ward Cunningham (2006)

People , Understanding

“Discussion groups tend to keep covering the same ground over and over again, because people forget what was said before. I think the invention of the Frequently Asked Questions, the FAQ, was a response to that. A lot of times just reading the FAQ is more valuable than joining the discussion group.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

People , Question , Thinking , Time

“Over and over, people try to design systems that make tomorrow's work easy. But when tomorrow comes it turns out they didn't quite understand tomorrow's work, and they actually made it harder.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

People , Understanding

“In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs."”

Ward Cunningham

And I said, "Well that's wrong."
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People , Faith , Way , Thinking

“The idea of where does an idea come from and who should get credit for it is pretty soft. But I think people are pretty good at dealing with that softness and recognizing contribution when they know the people involved. With collective ownership, we create a social situation where you can get to know a person by how they spin their intellect into source code statements.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People , Idea , Thinking , Personality

“There's been an awful lot of discussion about what is or isn't simple, and people have gotten a pretty sophisticated notion of simplicity, but I'm not sure it has helped.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

People , Help

“What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

People

“When people work code they can often see things I set out to do that they wouldn't notice otherwise. And there are no obligations to say, "Ward you're brilliant," but sometimes they say, "Ward you're brilliant." And that strokes my ego. Pride of ownership? You bet.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People

“All the time we find ourselves in situations where people know things about the program, but they can't apply that knowledge to the program. Why? Because the knowledge runs counter to some organizational decision that was made before they had that knowledge. In other words, the program becomes resistant to that collection of knowledge.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People , Knowledge , Decision , Time

“Many people have experience with a program that's gotten out of control. They have an idea. They think they know what they want to do. But when they go to put the idea in, the idea is forgotten by the time they've figured out how to put it in.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), To Plan or Not To Plan

People , Idea , Thinking , Time

“One’s words are a gift to the community. For the wiki nature to take whole, you have to let go of your words. You have to be okay with that. This goes into the name, called refactoring. To collaborate on a work, one must trust. The reason the cooperation happens is we are people and it is deep in our nature to do things together.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

People , Communication , Nature

“With wiki, you have to trust people more than you have any reason to trust them. In 1995, it was a safer environment, don’t know if I could have launched wiki today.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

People