As Wikipedia, the collaboratively edited online encyclopedia, becomes more prominent, people often wonder who operates and administers the site. I'm also asked sometimes how I became involved as an administrator.
A majority of the people who contribute occasionally to Wikipedia may have little or no interaction with the administrative side of things at all. A new user doesn't need anyone's permission to start editing or to register an account. One can make dozens or hundreds of edits and never encounter an administrator acting as such or come into contact with the site's rules and guidelines.
My experience as "newbie" Wikipedian was a largely, and perhaps unusually, positive one, and the lens of my own early experiences probably still flavors how I look at the site. As soon as I registered my account, an experienced editor left a helpful "welcome" message on my talkpage, with links to relevant pages of policies and helpful hints. (Each user has a talkpage, which is a special page for messages intended for that user.) The first time I made a bunch of edits to an article, someone posted to my talkpage and thanked me for my contributions. When I had questions about how to format an article, I posted to the Help Desk and received a polite and useful response almost instantly. When I made rookie mistakes, they were quietly corrected and I was gently advised what had gone wrong. I was invited to join a project of editors with interests similar to mine. When I started to learn about policies, I read guidelines such as "be civil to your fellow editors," "when there is a disagreement, discuss it and seek consensus," and "don't bite the newcomers."
So my first impression was that Wikipedians included a collaborative group of exceptionally friendly people working together to write an encyclopedia while having some fun in the process. (Okay, I soon learned that not every page of Wikipedia was like that, as I was clued in pretty early to some areas where there was some nasty feuding going on. In fact, within a couple of months, I was trying unsuccessfully to mediate one of the loudest feuds on the site. But a first impression is a first impression.)
Of course, not everyone has the same generally favorable introduction to contributing that I did. If an editor's first contribution is an article about an marginally notable person or a garage band or his junior high school, his first memory of Wikipedia may be of the article being summarily deleted. If a user starts off writing in a controversial area, her first experience may be one of "edit-warring" as disputing users change the article back-and-forth to their preferred versions. If an editor starts off by uploading images, she will very likely receive a warning for inadvertently violating one or another of the complex rules implemented to prevent copyright violations. And sometimes one just runs into another editor who either doesn't know anything about the subject-matter but acts as if he does, or who just feels like being a jerk.
(I was once asked whether I'd ever been a party to a real edit-war. The biggest one I recall was an ongoing dispute about whether Presidential and Congressional terms prior to the Twentieth Amendment ended at midnight on March 3rd or at noon on March 4th. This issue comes up all the time in biographies and lists. The answer, of course, is March 4th, but because there are some otherwise authoritative sources such as older editions of the "Congressional Biographical Directory" that say March 3rd, this remains a matter of occasional contention.)
So sooner or later a truly experienced editor will run into the administrative apparatus underlying the site. On the English Wikipedia, any registered editor is eligible to run for the status of administrator. In practice a few months' editing experience and a few thousand edits are required for a successful candidacy. Nominations can be made by oneself or by another user and are posted to a page called "Requests for adminship" ("RfA"), where any interested user can post a "support" or "oppose" comment (one must carefully avoid calling it a "vote") based on whatever criteria (within reason) they individually choose to apply.
After seven days, the results are reviewed by a senior administrator archly designated as a "bureaucrat," who determines whether there is a "consensus" to promote the candidate. Hundreds of megabytes of text on [[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship]] have been spent in seeking out the perfect metaphysical definition of consensus, but in practice, support from 75% of the "!voters" typically guarantees promotion.
There are no requirements for adminship beyond having a sufficiently strong record of participation to pass RfA. There is no requirement that the candidate disclose his or her real name or background, and many don't. (I've never disclosed my real name on-wiki, although at this point I will soon go ahead and do so.) For example, there is no minimum age requirement. (Certain specialized functionaries do now have to be over 18 and provide proof of their identity to the Wikimedia Foundation Office, though they don't have to disclose it publicly.) There have been administrators as young as 12 or 13 years old; there are no good demographic numbers that I'm aware of, but I would estimate that the median age would be no higher than mid-20s, and I'm painfully aware that at age 46 I am almost surely in the oldest decile of admins. (It feels like just yesterday that I was the youngest person ever elected to the School Board in my town, and now I'm a senior wiki-citizen.)
Critics of Wikipedia often suggest that there is a serious problem with the fact that so many of the administrators, with important powers such as blocking and deletion, are relatively youthful. These are often the same people who suggest that it is absurd for older people with more life experience to spend a portion of their hobby time serving as Wikipedia administrators. Sometimes the same critics make both of these comments, but they are, in effect if not in intent, mutually exclusive.
Administrators are given certain special powers not open to other users, such as the ability to block someone who has violated Wikipedia policies from editing; to delete a page; to protect a page from editing (either by new users or by any non-admin); close certain discussions and decide their outcomes; to view the content of most material that has been deleted. There are about 1600 administrators on the English Wikipedia, of whom a few hundred are active at any one time. There are rules governing how admins are to use their tools, and policies urging them to be civil and helpful in their interactions with other users. In my experience, most administrators do their best to live up to these guidelines; of course, the occasional exception affects the reputation of all.
There is also a system of methods for dispute resolution, including various options for mediation and noticeboards for discussing different types of concerns that may arise. At the end of the dispute resolution process is a body known as the Arbitration Committee, which consists of a group of editors (currently 16) chosen in annual elections. (Formally, the committee is appointed by Jimmy Wales, who holds a special role in Wikipedia governance derived from his role in founding the site, but in the past few elections he has followed the election returns.) The ArbCom addresses user conduct disputes, and typically is not empowered to decide issues such as "which version of this article is better?" or "what should our policy on such-and-such be?" At the moment there is no central mechanism for handing down binding resolution on content disputes or policy decisions, and there is disagreement about whether it would be desirable for there to be one.
I've been following the workings of the ArbCom since early in my wiki-career: first as an occasional critic, later as a clerk for the committee, and since January 2008 as one of the arbitrators. My work as an administrator and an arbitrator has completely changed my Wikipedia experience: Instead of contributing substance to a growing body of free knowledge in an atmosphere of respect and harmony, I must review the history of Wikipedia's most contentious, protracted, bitter, and unhappy disputes and help decide what to do about them.
The cases that come to arbitration are those that cannot be resolved any other way. Most often, they concern editing disputes in exactly the areas one might expect to be the most contentious of all; cases we have accepted this year have included disputes about editing of [[Ayn Rand]] and related articles, of [[Scientology]] and related articles, of [[Ireland]] (is "Ireland" primarily the name of an island or a country), of [[Macedonia]] (or is it [[The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia]]?), and so on. We have also accepted cases involving individual administrators or editors who have engaged in allegedly problematic behavior.
After reviewing each case, the committee issues a decision comprising principles, findings of fact, and remedies. The remedies we can hand down range from noting instances of bad behavior and admonishing parties to do better, restricting a user's editing (such as by banning her from editing articles about a particular topic), imposing various types of probations or mentorships, revoking an administrator's adminship ("desysopping"), or in the most extreme cases, banning an editor from Wikipedia altogether.
We try to keep the process from becoming too legalistic, although occasional legal terms or wordings sneak into the process or the decisions, for which I am occasionally to blame. (The most useful thing I've tried to bring with me in terms of a legal concept is an instinct to always make sure that the parties have had a fair opportunity to present their views and evidence before we proceed to a decision.) My real-life work as a lawyer has not had much to do with how I think as an arbitrator: There are very few parallels between the work of a committee on a website and anything that happens in the real world, and in decisions, I've emphasized that nothing we decide is meant to have any consequences in the offline world. Still, sometime, if I can figure out a way to do it without sounding absurdly aggrandizing, I will write about what my time as a Wikipedia arbitrator has taught me about the types of decisions that must be made every day by a judge of a multi-member appellate court with a discretionary jurisdiction.
Ultimate control over the English Wikipedia, along with all of the sister projects and projects in other languages, resides with the Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation is the charitable foundation that owns the equipment and the trademarks. The Foundation has a board of directors (chosen by a combination of members), an Executive Director and a small staff, and a General Counsel (currently Mike Godwin, of Godwin's Law fame). It sets policy only at a very broad level, and does not get involved in addressing particular disputes.
Tomorrow: Some responses to reader comments.
Related Posts (on one page):
But seriously, it doesn't really matter than you didn't run into problems most of the time. Problems, by their nature, only happen occasionally, and a new person, unless he's in a few specific situations where new people are likely to have unpleasant experiences, won't run into any of them. There's also some selection bias here; long-term Wikipedia editors are disproportionately lucky (because the unlucky people who ran into lots of problems are more likely to not stick around for the long term), and admins are going to be even more disproportionately lucky for the same reason.
Also, the new person probably can't even recognize many problems. It's hard to know that someone's abusing the rules when you can barely understand the rules as is, especially when the rules interact in subtle ways.
This often amounts to a bureaucratic maze, since you don't actually get to choose to skip some of these methods--you have to do them in the proper order, or else get told "you have to try mediation first". Having so many methods to use is also great for filibustering and status quo abuse--bu the time you worked your way through all the different methods, the thing you're complaining about has been around for so long that nobody's going to fix it because it's now the status quo.
(Not to mention the spurious accusations of forum shopping that get thrown out if you try to use more than one method.)
The ArbCom addresses user conduct disputes, and typically is not empowered to decide issues such as "which version of this article is better?" or "what should our policy on such-and-such be?"
I may also add that the Arbcom sometimes makes defacto policy decisions. And when they mess up, getting them to fix it can be like pulling teeth because Arbcom won't make the policy change that reverses the previous policy change that they pretend not to have made.
It's a Rule to End All Rules, but the Ruling Hypocracy of Double Standards rules that only the E-lite WikiPower Rangers can play by that rule, for whom it works as a Get Out of Jail/Gaol Free Card — let any mere WikiPeon invoke the Holy Rule of IAR and he/she'll find it's the Third Rail on the Trolley Line.
Zaaap!!!
Suffice to say this left me with the initial impression that there was a lot of counterproductive activity being engaged in by editors who are often dedicated to bringing Wikipedia to their ideal level of depth, which is often heavily contingent upon their particular interests. I'm wondering if there's any operative philosophy here on retaining perspective - just because I don't care about some alien race in the Star Wars Expanded Universe doesn't mean that I stand to gain much from deleting the page, nor does Wikipedia stand to gain much, but I could see particular losers losing a fair amount. This discussion obviously overlaps with notability some, but not completely.
Thankfully, the growth of third-party wikis like those provided by Wikia have allowed for much more detailed Wikis on fandoms in particular to arise, so ultimately the loss of Wikipedia's pages on this given anime (which was One Piece, for the record) was ultimately not my loss, but the gain of the One Piece wikia... I imagine that many fandoms have experienced the same process. Does the existence of third-party fandom Wikis justify paring down pages on TOW? Because I still don't believe that we'll see individual Star Trek pages being culled even if there's a vibrant third-party Wiki...
Thank God you're not "Fred Bear". That is maybe the worst song ever written.
Anyway, if you're interested in some of the money-trail issues at the Wikimedia Foundation, I started a thread over at Wikipedia Review. Per usual, though it's some of my best investigative work, hardly anybody pays attention to it.
You say, without an ounce of cynicism:
"Thankfully, the growth of third-party wikis like those provided by Wikia have allowed for much more detailed Wikis on fandoms in particular to arise, so ultimately the loss of Wikipedia's pages on this given anime (which was One Piece, for the record) was ultimately not my loss, but the gain of the One Piece wikia."
Might I translate your statement to better reflect the rarely-published reality? Thank you.
"Thankfully for Jimmy Wales and his investors, the growth of third-party wikis like those exploited by Wikia have allowed for much more detailed Wikis on fandoms in particular to arise, so ultimately the subtle re-direction of Wikipedia's pages over to Wikia was ultimately not my loss, but the financial gain of the self-dealing co-founder of both Wikipedia and Wikia."
There we go, I feel much better.
At any rate, the gist of the ThrasyMachiavellian system of Might Making Right in the Dead Of Night is clear enough — power is transmitted from the WikiPowers That Be On High by the ever-shifting vassalary linkages that connect one oaf of fealty to lower down feudal oafs.
Where are the ArbCommodious Ones in all this?
They are the Clergy, living in a Cloud Cuckoo Land of ideal ideology, divorced from the rude realities of plebe and peon, forever preaching the constantly doctored doctrine that No Body But No Body ever practices, least of all their Holinesses.
Nota Bene. There is an ongoing discussion of Ira's posts on this thread at The Wikipedia Review.
Jon Awbrey
After making over 50 edits over a four year period, my username was blocked due to one of WP's extra handy rules: no-URLs-in-usernames. That was done just minutes after posting something that a "protector" didn't want on BHO's *talk* page. That dispute is detailed here. Note that none of them were willing to tell me how to put the truth into a WP-correct form. Note also that, in order to show that a "reliable source" is lying, I had to find another "reliable source" to say they were lying, something no "reliable source" is willing to do. Apparently simply looking at the facts isn't enough, you have to find a "reliable source" to back it up.
The bottom line is that WP is little more than a disinfo source that allows interested parties to mislead people. One solution is to constantly point that out to anyone who relies on WP. Another solution is to stop linking to WP.
If thousands of people dropped their links to WP, it would sooner or later fall in the search results. I urge everyone to review all webpages they control for links to WP and convert them into plain text links or at the least put a nofollow tag on those links. Otherwise, WP will just keep on spreading disinfo.
Perhaps as great as Copernicus, Da Vinci or Galileo, is Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Unlike the massive purges at the Wayback Machine, which is not unlike the burning of the great [[Library of Alexandria]], Wikipedia has withstood some of the savage rending of humanity at the hands of the IWF, and has provided at least a modicum of [[Salvage ethnography]], one example of which is its [[Virgin Killer]] article.
Wikipedia articulates what it means to be [[Homo faber]] so that we might better appreciate [[Homo ludens]].
All those many volunteers at Wikipedia that keep that wonder going are unsung heroes. Many thanks.
Peter's example might be a good one (and not just because I work on anime for a living, heh.) Wikipedia's goal is to be an encyclopedia, not the Ultimate Container of All Knowledge. There comes a point beyond which it makes sense not to go further, especially when you're talking about fan stuff, lest you reach the level depicted here: http://xkcd.com/446/
Generally speaking, if I'm looking at Wikipedia about a fictional topic, I'm doing so because I've never heard of it before, I just encountered a reference to it, and I want to know what the heck it is. A quick series synopsis and a description of the main characters are useful in this respect. Basic information like "when was it produced" and "who owns it" and "how many episodes was it?" are important. A couple of sub-pages are okay if it's complicated - for example, Fate/Stay Night has one detailing the differences between the anime plot and the various paths in the original computer game, since they're kind of complicated. Nothing wrong with that.
You mention "they didn't want a One Piece episode guide!" without mentioning that there are more episodes of One Piece than of every Star Trek series put together; an episode guide for that show would be as long as a novel. Say what you will, but there's basic load issues involved...
It's fair to say "but the policies aren't applied consistently!", but you should realize that maybe people are okay with that. If Star Trek and Star Wars are an exception for fan stuff, well, there are almost certainly orders of magnitude more fans of Star Wars and Star Trek on the Wiki management staff.
The growth of third-party Wikis is definitely a good thing. I enjoy playing Dwarf Fortress, for example. A wiki page on it might have a couple of screenshots and some of the basics; the DFWiki has a thorough description of every aspect of the game. There's no possible way that Wikipedia would be willing to host that much information about an obscure ASCII-based game... but it might have hosted enough that DFWiki never existed, in which case I would have never seen the ideal design for a king's chamber with internal lava vent. And the world would have been that much poorer for it.
I do think, though, that Wikipedia could go a lot further in making "new" editors welcome. A guide to editing would be great (or rather, I'm sure there IS one, but where?) There are lots of complaints in these threads of new editors attempting to contribute, their submissions being rejected on grounds they clearly do not accept as legitimate, and the new editor gives up in disgust. Some of these might be due to submissions of poor quality, of course; others are doubtless related to the loose and arcane "rules" for editing, where the editor may have merely been ignorant of the rule (or it might be alluded to by another editor when it should not be, and arguing with 13-year-olds with unlimited time is one sure way to lose on the Internet). If there was a centralized and easy-to-find guide for what you needed to know before breaking out your red pen, some of these negative impressions might not have happened, and some of the discouraged editors might have stuck around to make further contributions.
(On the flip side, if the rules are easy to find and enforced with something approaching consistency, there will be an increase in the number of disputes, as people who might have otherwise thrown up their hands and said "screw this!" will instead speak up in the belief that they're justified. That's more work for the Arbitration Committee...)
I feel like I'm rambling a little, but that's more or less how my feelings on the topic run. Wikipedia is neat! I'm glad it exists. It's not perfect and there are a few ways it could be made better. Unfortunately most of those ways involve arguing with someone and I have to ask myself, do I really care that much?
I proposed that Wikipedia disputes be handled by adding a brief description of the disputed item to the Wikipedia article along with a statement that the item is disputed and links to external websites or separate Wikipedia discussion pages where the dispute is discussed or debated. This sensible proposal was ignored. Wikipedia's preferred methods of handling disputes are censorship and long edit wars.
An article in The Guardian says,
The website of a book titled "The Future of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig describes Wikipedia very well --
Reviews of a book named "True Enough" describe the effect of Internet censorship --
My blog has over 50 Wickedpedia-bashing articles in three post-label groups. [1] [2] [3] There are three groups because I am limited to a maximum of 20 articles per post label. The post labels are listed in the sidebar.
It's not an ultimate arbiter of truth. In fact, it's a lousy arbiter. Disputed subjects just aren't handled well. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that they could BE handled well. (If I look up an article on the curvature of the earth, I don't want to see the rebuttal posted by the Flat Earth Society, sorry. And several disputed topics DO have sections detailing the disputes, but as the editor who wrote them was a partisan of one of the sides involved, they're not exactly objective.) I'd like to think that I could contribute by offering even-handed analysis, but to be blunt, that's a thankless job and only slightly more constructive than playing Warcraft.
Imagine my surprise when I got back to the wiki page to find it had been deleted. I started again. It was quickly deleted ... by a Wiki administrator who had decided that this great guitarist was "inconsequential".
I'll not come back and I will certainly not participate. My experiences have been pretty much the opposite of yours. And my opinion has not changed of a self-appointed group of arrogant, unrestrained power-hungry fascists who act on their own personal whims.
Watching the behind the scenes political drama at Wikipedia has not changed my mind.
Most of you Wiki-tards need to get a life.
You usually can get a flavor for just how much slant there is by reading the discussion page for any political figure, where you will usually find lone conservative types vainly arguing for sanity and fairness (and not getting it).
One cannot help wondering if they shouldn't just allow three pages for these kinds of subjects: a liberal one, a conservative one, and a consensus one. You could pick your poison that way.
As usual, two of Wikipedia's biggest critics, Jon Awbrey and Greg Kohs, show up everywhere and anywhere that any discussion of Wikipedia takes place. (How do you do it, guys?) Both, of course, fail to note that they have been banned from Wikipedia for disruptive activity, which explains a great deal of their hostility to the project.
Wikipedia can be a great tool, but information in it has to be taken with a grain of salt. If one wanders into a politically-charged topic, there will be a leftward slant. Part of this is due to the political views of the userbase, and part of this is due to the limitations placed on sourcing; only "reliable sources" can be used, and since the MSM are predominantly left-of-center, there is often difficulty finding information that is balanced. A lot of the right-of-center editors avoid politically touchy issues to avoid conflicts.
There are plenty of areas where there is little or no drama where Wikipedia could use the help of editors who want to improve the project, and people who wish to experience it can work on one of those topics. For example, pick the article on the county in which you live; it's likely that there is only some basic demographic data, a general description of the location, and maybe one or two factoids. Find out the history of the county from a book written by someone with background, or even newspaper or magazine articles. Write something that adds to the value of the article, and include the source for that information. Voila! You've just constructively edited, and you don't even need to register to do so.
Suffice to say, since the subject didn't fit Wiki's narrative, the post was removed by the Wiki gods. Of course, we suffered through the normal abuse of being called racist, etc.
I'm a critic of Wikipedia. The problem is not the age of the people involved, but their lockstep left-wing politics and the bias this brings to the project. I thought it was interesting that you wrote this article without once mentioning this widely noted problem.
Come on, the userbase is not the problem, the people who run the show there are. As a reader of Wikepedia, I am part of the user base. But I don't get to decide what gets written. It's clear that the sites political bias is due to the feelings of the people at the top, and that non-liberals who persist in trying to instill some balance are quickly ejected.
From what I'm seeing it's a lot more likely that they "avoid politically touchy issues" because they know that if they don't, they will be banned for "disruptive activity", aka disagreeing with the prevailing groupthink.
The one rule is not just "Ignore All Rules" -- it's "Administrators Make Up Their Own Arbitrary, Discriminatory Rules As They Go Along" (AMUTOADRATGA). For example, the biography of Cheri Yecke cites personal blogs, which is against Wkipedia rules (unless the blogger is writing about him/herself or is a journalist blogging under the "editorial control" of a media organization). So I said that if you break the rule against citations of personal blogs, then you have to allow citations of my personal blog. The crooked administrators said that they were discriminating against my personal blog because it was "crappy" whereas the other personal blogs were "reputable" or "notable"! [link]
Avatar said (5.16.2009 8:19pm) --
That is the understatement of the year.
I proposed that disputes be handled by adding a brief description of the disputed item along with a statement that the item is disputed and links to external websites or separate Wikipedia discussion pages where the dispute is discussed or debated. There would be no implication of Wikipedia endorsement and Wikipedia articles would not be cluttered up with long discussions or debates about disputed items. This proposal was ignored. Wikipedia's preferred methods of handling disputes are censorship and long edit wars.
Avatar said,
The flat-earth idea is a trite straw man. There are legitimate disputes on Wikipedia.
Timekeeper said (5.17.2009 9:15am) --
I think you can add me to your list of Wikipedia's biggest critics -- my blog has over 50 Wikipedia-bashing articles in three post-label groups. [1] [2] [3]
Timekeeper said,
Why should anyone waste time and effort trying to improve an encyclopedia that needs to go? Wikipedia cannot be saved and is not worth saving.
Any global warming topic hews to Gorethedoxy. No shifting that, either. These are the people Orwell warned us about.
On the bright side, in any argument where wikepedia is used as a source, I know I have won.
Uhhh... wikipediphiles?
Anyone who thinks about it for a second knows this is nonsense in real world terms.
But let us thank the anonymous "administrator" {{citation needed}} Timekeeper for demonstrating how this bit of wiki-preaching works in practice.
Jon Awbrey (his real name)
If you do a little bit of digging, you can find out who I am. My name won't mean anything to you, because I'm not someone who is in any way notable. As for my editing, I do very little editing on articles about people, and most of that is removal of defamatory or unsourced comments.
(Sorry about the broken link, but the borked comment system here doesn't allow single words of more than 60 characters, and VC doesn't allow hyperlinks either.
http://
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/User_talk:Horologium#Confirmation_for_Jon_Awbrey
The point being that Wikipediots are as hypocritical about the principal of "Mind the Edits, Not the Editor" as they are about all their other espoused ideals. They spend a fantastic amount of time identifying and trying to discredit anyone who criticizes their ways, doing all of this behind the cover of anonymity and multiple layers of deception.
Jon Awbrey
Does it say something about the people running this place that the term "bureaucrat" is used in an honorable way? The only place I ever want to see a bureaucrat is either 1) standing in an unemployment line, or 2) headed back to college to learn some sort of useful skill.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
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