Why Wikipedia Is Doomed, The Six Rotten Pillars of Wikipedia Options Rating

[Cedric]

THE SIX ROTTEN PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA

3. ANONYMOUS EDITING– THE CULT OF IRRESPONSIBILITY. Anonymous commentary, particularly that involving political criticism or satire, has a rather long and storied tradition in English-speaking nations. Contrast this with the encyclopedist tradition in 18th Century Britain and France, taking in contributions from well known and credited experts in their respective fields to produce the first western general knowledge encyclopedias in the modern era. In constructing its online “encyclopedia”, however, Wikipedia draws upon a far more recent tradition dating from the 1980s– Usenet message boards populated mostly by anonymous users.

Anonymous editing is the most sacred cow on WP, other than “NPOV” and instant editing. Per official policy, the “outing” of personal information about a WP user (defined as “legal name, date of birth, social security number, home or workplace address, telephone number, email address, or other contact information, regardless of whether or not the information is actually correct”) is absolutely verboten and a blockable offense. There is also no exception for posting such information when the user themself has publicly posted the information elsewhere. The hyperbolic justification given is that “outing” “is an unjustifiable and uninvited invasion of privacy and may place that editor at risk of harm in ‘the real world’.” The “harm” that is being anticipated here are those “actions which deliberately expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others.” This, then, is the rationale of abandoning the centuries old practice of crediting contributors using their real names, and instead allowing the anonymous contribution practices of the Usenet.

By the time WP came along in 2001, the flamewars of the Usenet had already passed into legend. Also by that time, the fact that anonymous posting on the internet has the power to turn some ordinarily well behaved and seemingly sensible people into raving sociopaths was well documented. It would seem, then, that whenever presented with a choice between little or no drama and lots of drama, WP can be reliably expected to choose the path of “moar dramahz”. That would fit, of course, with the MMORPG character of WP. But WP is more than just a MMORPG; it is also a libel platform containing thousands of “BLPs” (biographies of living persons). Anonymous editing, accordingly, is convenient for avoiding responsibility for publishing libels about celebrities, bosses, colleagues, competitors, or others that piss you off. But the advantages of anonymity don’t stop there. Polemicists can avoid disclosing their personal interests (wikispeak: “COI”) while advancing their agendas. Spammers and shills can hide the fact that they are spamming and shilling, as long as they aren’t being too obvious about it. Politicians and their staffs can enhance C.V.s and legislative records, and de-emphasize or eliminate scandals, without disclosing their “COI”. If you enjoy engaging in trolling, you don’t really want your real name associated that seventh grade level prose, even if you are still in the seventh grade. And as for the advantages for fetishists, that’s obvious.

Thus, it is not hard to see the attraction of anonymity. Fulfilling one’s desire for revenge, personal and political interests, lusts, avarice, and desire to cause mayhem without consequence is pretty seductive. And even if one is caught “out”, you can simply start over again with a new account. This has happened on WP many, many times. Given the penchant that the more zealous WP users (a/k/a “wikipediots”) have for playing at martyrs, it is hard to know if this mad “outing” policy was really born of an overwrought persecution complex on the part of the policy authors, or whether it was a cynical ploy to increase participation (and drama) on WP. It could have even been some mixture of the two. In any event, it is clear that WP has effectively created a cult of irresponsibility; it has become an attractive nuisance to children and to adults who prefer to act irresponsibly.

I am not unmindful that although the “outing” policy is absolute by its own terms, it is by no means absolute in its enforcement. A number of users deemed unmutual by The Cabal, or by one of the various sub-cabals (“wiki projects”), have been “outed” as punishment for their real or imagined “wiki-crimes”. That would be a good subject for another thread.

“On second thought, let’s not go to Wikipedia. It is a silly place.”

(Tomorrow's installment: HOSTILITY TO EXPERTS– THE CULT OF THE IGNORANT AMATEUR)

[Moulton]

Abandoned Assassins of Azazel

To persuade people to solve a problem you first have to persuade them a problem exists.

There probably aren't very many people here old enough to remember Eric Sevareid, one of the pioneers of television journalism in the tradition of Edward R. Murrow.

Sevareid once articulated an insight that came to be known as The Sevareid Effect: The solution to any problem contains the seeds to a new generation of problems.

The advent of the Wiki software helped solve the problem of collaborative editing over the Internet.

But true to the Sevareid Effect, the introduction of Wiki created a raft of new problems associated with the politics of collaborative editing.

Collaboration is hard enough among the members of a team who are committed to a common goal. But the contenders in the Wikisphere are hardly committed to a common overarching goal.

Wiki might have been made to work except for one monumental blunder. Jimbo failed to establish a functional process for conflict resolution among contentious collaborators.

The irony is that, while Wiki represented the cutting edge in collaborative software technology, Wikipedia devolved a dysfunctional social regulatory mechanism that was so tribalistic and anachronistic, it predates the advent of the Rule of Law into Western Civilization. With the primary tool of management being poorly regulated blocking and banning, Wikipedia reprised a corrosive culture of assassination and abandonment more appropriate to a Desert Wilderness MMPORG than to a serious academic enterprise to construct an encyclopedia of authentic knowledge.

Wikipedia could have been a project that attracted the finest crafters of the timeless books of knowledge. Instead Jimbo attracted a petulant posse of predators who assassinated the authors of ascending awareness.

Happy Halloween, Wikipedia

[Cedric]

THE SIX ROTTEN PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA

4. HOSTILITY TO EXPERTS– THE CULT OF THE IGNORANT AMATEUR. Wikipedia’s hostility toward experts editing “the encyclopedia”, and its inability to retain expert users, are problems well documented here at Wikipedia Review. While hostility to experts does have a lot to do with the “anyone can edit” policy of WP, in my view it has even more to do with how “consensus” is reached to determine the content of articles.

WP does not have any explicit policy to discourage expert participation, but it might as well have. In terms of determining content, WP focuses not so much on the actual merits of factual claims or contentions, but rather upon process and user behavior. Central to this view is WP’s official policy on consensus, which is founded directly upon The Jimbo’s peculiar definition of that word:

Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal.

Note that the emphasis is on process, not the normal definition of “consensus”, which is a general agreement between a group as a whole. “Consensus” is deemed to be “Wikipedia's fundamental model for editorial decision-making”, and is also a chief part of the “Fourth Pillar” of WP. The clear emphasis on process is also shown by the flow chart which appears on the policy page.

The process to determine “consensus”, and in turn content, is but vaguely defined in the policy. There is an expression that “a limited group of editors” cannot determine “consensus”, but no explanation of how to determine what constitutes “a representative group”, which is empowered to decide “consensus” “on behalf of the community as a whole.” Mostly, the policy is a mish-mash of several wiki-mutuality concepts (like “neutrality”, “good faith”, and “civility”) that are expected through some wiki-magic to work together to provide the process that in turn provides the content. This policy was famously satirized in 2006 by the comedian and author Stephen Colbert, who dubbed it “wikiality”, the process by which “truthiness” is determined. This soon thereafter led to the famous Tripling Elephants Incident, which in turn led to Colbert being “indefblocked” from WP by Jimbo for his crimes of unmutuality.

So how does this affect experts? Note that the emphasis in the policy is not only upon process, but specifically upon “on-wiki” process. Note also that although there are a few special exceptions specified, none involve experts. Accordingly, by official policy, the opinions of experts carry no special weight on WP, nor do any “off-wiki” processes for determining accuracy or reliability of information carry any especial weight. This would appear to be in conflict with the “No Original Research” policy, which ostensibly seeks to preserve WP as a “tertiary source”. It is little wonder that so many experts have been disillusioned and even angered by their WP experience. What WP appears to offer with one hand, it takes away with another. Their subject matter knowledge and expertise frequently finds itself trumped by the gamesmanship and knowledge of “on-wiki” processes of otherwise ignorant amateurs, who are most often teens and twenty-somethings. Being a recognized expert in your field means little to nothing to a Teenaged Mutant Wiki-Admin™. It’s all about process and user behavior; more specifically, about catching your opponent “out” and eliminating them from the game.

When it comes to process, it also should be noted that WP lacks any mandatory process to resolve content disputes. Ultimately, only voluntary mediation is available. The dispute resolution jurisdiction of ArbCom (WP’s “supreme court”) extends only issues of user behavior. So what does this mean? On WP what it most often means is that if a user belongs to a rather determined group (often a “wiki-project”) that is devoted to promoting certain views and holding tough against outsiders with other views, they will usually prevail by wearing down their opponents, or driving them off, through gaming the system. Ultimately, it is not about what you know, but how you play the game.

Official Teenage Mutant Wiki-Admin™ T-shirt

(Tomorrow's installment: EXPLOITATION OF THE ADDICTED AND MENTALLY ILL)

[Peter Damian]

I have converted this into an article here

http://wikipediareview.com/The_Six_Rotten_Pillars_of_Wikipedia

with Cedric's permission. Minor stylistic adjustments, and I am still puzzling out how to get the pictures and other bits of formatting to work.

[flash]

It's the wisdom of the crowds principle. Yes, an expert on say, Chinese philosophy, is smarter than say, 'Joe the Wiki editor' - or thickies-who-think-they-know like Philogo or Snowded... but curiously, they may be less smart than the combination of Joe, Philogo and Snowded plus 100 others.

You can see this curious effect in 'Pub quizzes'... Wikipedia is a Pub Quiz encyclopedia...

The success and the really rather important thing about Wp is that is shows how collaborative editing can work. To repeat my own humble contribution to this debate:

the problem is that the editing is no longer democratic

The cult of the Admin-Expert has destroyed that.

Wikipedia reprised a corrosive culture of assassination and abandonment more appropriate to a Desert Wilderness MMPORG than to a serious academic enterprise to construct an encyclopedia of authentic knowledge.

Wikipedia could have been a project that attracted the finest crafters of the timeless books of knowledge. Instead Jimbo attracted a petulant posse of predators who assassinated the authors of ascending awareness.

This post has been edited by flash: Thu 30th October 2008, 2:12pm

[dogbiscuit]

It's the wisdom of the crowds principle. Yes, an expert on say, Chinese philosophy, is smarter than say, 'Joe the Wiki editor' - or thickies-who-think-they-know like Philogo or Snowded... but curiously, they may be less smart than the combination of Joe, Philogo and Snowded plus 100 others.

You can see this curious effect in 'Pub quizzes'... Wikipedia is a Pub Quiz encyclopedia...

One effect you can see in pub quizzes is that a small team is more effective than a large team. Many of the best pub quiz teams have individual specialists, and while there may be areas where people are not sure in their own area and look for support, a good pub quiz team will defer to their expert on the round, even if they outnumber him, as they recognise that knowledge is not a vote, instead they recognise his track record and expertise.

I think you are making exactly the wrong assumption - and the other big difference is that in real life, over many years, people develop knowledge and trust about people which allows them to come to considered judgements as to the abilities of individuals. Wikipedia expects unknown people to trust other unknown people with only a "because I said so" to base it on, and worse, deprecates the input of those who can attest to holding specialist knowledge.

[Cedric]

I have converted this into an article here

http://wikipediareview.com/The_Six_Rotten_Pillars_of_Wikipedia

with Cedric's permission. Minor stylistic adjustments, and I am still puzzling out how to get the pictures and other bits of formatting to work.

It looks like Moulton's got that fixed.

[Peter Damian]

It's the wisdom of the crowds principle. Yes, an expert on say, Chinese philosophy, is smarter than say, 'Joe the Wiki editor' - or thickies-who-think-they-know like Philogo or Snowded... but curiously, they may be less smart than the combination of Joe, Philogo and Snowded plus 100 others.

You can see this curious effect in 'Pub quizzes'... Wikipedia is a Pub Quiz encyclopedia...

One effect you can see in pub quizzes is that a small team is more effective than a large team. Many of the best pub quiz teams have individual specialists, and while there may be areas where people are not sure in their own area and look for support, a good pub quiz team will defer to their expert on the round, even if they outnumber him, as they recognise that knowledge is not a vote, instead they recognise his track record and expertise.

I think you are making exactly the wrong assumption - and the other big difference is that in real life, over many years, people develop knowledge and trust about people which allows them to come to considered judgements as to the abilities of individuals. Wikipedia expects unknown people to trust other unknown people with only a "because I said so" to base it on, and worse, deprecates the input of those who can attest to holding specialist knowledge.

That's absolutely right on all counts. Yes, a winning quiz team combines people who are expert in particular areas, but who do not necessarily have a broad general knowledge. This strategy will generally beat a team of Oxbridge know-it-all types who are not necessarily expert in Bruce Springsteen albums. And yes, the team absolutely have to trust each other on who is the expert on what. The last one I did we came narrowly second because of one person who insisted they knew the title of some Harry Potter book against the intuition of everyone else on the team. Another team who normally do very well came last because of one person imposed on them by the PTA, and who came across initially as an expert, but wasn't. Once a team understands this, they will tend to ignore the contributions of the faux-expert.

Wikipedia does not easily allow such team-building. It's like attending a quiz night with a bunch of people you never met and probably hate. Worse, just as you have acquired a sense of who is the bullshitter and whose answers can be trusted, the whole table is reorganised and some people come in, others leave.

[Milton Roe]

It's the wisdom of the crowds principle. Yes, an expert on say, Chinese philosophy, is smarter than say, 'Joe the Wiki editor' - or thickies-who-think-they-know like Philogo or Snowded... but curiously, they may be less smart than the combination of Joe, Philogo and Snowded plus 100 others.

You can see this curious effect in 'Pub quizzes'... Wikipedia is a Pub Quiz encyclopedia...

One effect you can see in pub quizzes is that a small team is more effective than a large team. Many of the best pub quiz teams have individual specialists, and while there may be areas where people are not sure in their own area and look for support, a good pub quiz team will defer to their expert on the round, even if they outnumber him, as they recognise that knowledge is not a vote, instead they recognise his track record and expertise.

I think you are making exactly the wrong assumption - and the other big difference is that in real life, over many years, people develop knowledge and trust about people which allows them to come to considered judgements as to the abilities of individuals. Wikipedia expects unknown people to trust other unknown people with only a "because I said so" to base it on, and worse, deprecates the input of those who can attest to holding specialist knowledge.

That's absolutely right on all counts. Yes, a winning quiz team combines people who are expert in particular areas, but who do not necessarily have a broad general knowledge. This strategy will generally beat a team of Oxbridge know-it-all types who are not necessarily expert in Bruce Springsteen albums. And yes, the team absolutely have to trust each other on who is the expert on what. The last one I did we came narrowly second because of one person who insisted they knew the title of some Harry Potter book against the intuition of everyone else on the team. Another team who normally do very well came last because of one person imposed on them by the PTA, and who came across initially as an expert, but wasn't. Once a team understands this, they will tend to ignore the contributions of the faux-expert.

Wikipedia does not easily allow such team-building. It's like attending a quiz night with a bunch of people you never met and probably hate. Worse, just as you have acquired a sense of who is the bullshitter and whose answers can be trusted, the whole table is reorganised and some people come in, others leave.

I'm going to commit a breach of etiquette by leaving everything above quoted, because it's all germane to my own favorite example, also.

During the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Buzz did something nobody had ever figured on in simulation, which was to leave the docking-tracking radar on, so he'd always have some idea of where the command module was. They'd expected him to turn it off, since it wasn't needed for landing. This resulting in the computer getting data from two radars at once, which clogged its tiny brain and made it overload. Fortunately, it wasn't programmed with Windoze and didn't lock and need rebooting. What it did do, is give a sort of "temporarily overloaded" message, like WP does, only it did so as a single 4 digit number, which nobody at Houston ground control had ever seen, due to it never happening. The bad thing: this happens when the LM is very close to landing, still flying over boulder fields at a good clip, still high enough for a crash to kill everyone, and with a minute or two of fuel remaining. Everybody is too damn BUSY to figure out or have a conference about what this odd code means, even though the computer is giving what look like error messages. And they NEED that computer. Since there's no scale on the moon (it's fractal, all the way down) you can't tell by eye how high up you are. The landing computer gives you the correct altitude and speed and if you don't have that, you're dead.

So they ask the control room expert, who happens to be some guy way down the ranks, but is THE expert on this little problem. HE happens to know what the number means, because he's seen it a few times only in some odd simulations, a long time ago. He knows it's not an abort problem-- that the computer will continue to chew data and the error code (there are actually two separate error codes being given, by now) only means the computer is discarding data which isn't important to the landing, anyway (yeah, this thing is way dumber than a pocket calculator-- I don't think it even has a single integrated circuit-- but it's smart enough to prioritize, because it has been programmed by geniuses).

So the little guy that nobody knows, except that he's the designated expert, says "Go. No abort." They don't ask him to explain-- there isn't TIME. With the whole mission riding on the answer, they just take his word. When the next error code comes in-- a different number that they've also never seen, the computer expert says "Same type. Go." Again, they take his work and ask no questions. So do the astronauts landing the LM.

And that's how we made it to the surface of the moon for the first time, with 45 seconds of fuel left, and a computer acting up. The later consensus is that they did good.

[everyking]

It looks to me like these "rotten pillars" are just denunciations of the things Wikipedia is doing right, and which are responsible for its overwhelming success. Just because Wikipedia is dysfunctional in some sense doesn't mean its basic principles are wrong. The basics are just fine; it's the failure to refine site administration and governance to keep up with the site's rapid development that has caused problems.

[dogbiscuit]

It looks to me like these "rotten pillars" are just denunciations of the things Wikipedia is doing right, and which are responsible for its overwhelming success. Just because Wikipedia is dysfunctional in some sense doesn't mean its basic principles are wrong. The basics are just fine; it's the failure to refine site administration and governance to keep up with the site's rapid development that has caused problems.

Define success.

[Moulton]

It looks to me like these "rotten pillars" are just denunciations of the things Wikipedia is doing right, and which are responsible for its overwhelming success. Just because Wikipedia is dysfunctional in some sense doesn't mean its basic principles are wrong. The basics are just fine; it's the failure to refine site administration and governance to keep up with the site's rapid development that has caused problems.

The software was 21st Century and quite functional.

The anachronistic processes for socio-political regulation, however, were taken from pre-Hammurabic tribal cultures of the desert wilderness.

Which, I suppose, is why Wikipedia has the look and feel of a pre-biblical Desert Wilderness MMPORG.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Thu 30th October 2008, 6:45pm

[flash]

Yup... sure, why not. Both the 'winning pub team' model and the Houston space center one indicate that a well-organised group is better than 'the best expert'.

With WP, the tension is over admin-experts or occasionally 'user votes' deciding. If WP were to attempt to land on the moon, for sure they'd ban the guy who recognised the error code and vote to change the mission to go to Mars...

[dogbiscuit]

Yup... sure, why not. Both the 'winning pub team' model and the Houston space center one indicate that a well-organised group is better than 'the best expert'.

With WP, the tension is over admin-experts or occasionally 'user votes' deciding. If WP were to attempt to land on the moon, for sure they'd ban the guy who recognised the error code and vote to change the mission to go to Mars...

Erm, bait and switch - well organised group was neither part of your original premise - which was "the wisdom of the crowds" which is the antithesis of a well organised group. Second switch is also the suggestion that WP is "well-organised". Leave admins out of it, the fundamental model of WP is disorganised mob rule.

[Later] - oh, and there is nothing in that example that suggests that a "best expert" is overridden in his field by an organised group - the organised group might defer to the best expert, but in the appropriate circumstances, a group could not invent more knowledge than an acknowledged expert already had.

[Kelly Martin]

An excellent example of this would be the three revert rule. Edit wars are resolved not by examining the quality of the edit, but by...I don't know...what does the three revert rule measure? Who can wikilawyer better? Who can get a bigger gang of cabal members on their side? Who can create more sockpuppets? Who can get more of their friends to act as meatpuppets? It's certainly not merit.

3RR encourages the formation of gangs. That it would do so should have been obvious to those who proposed and supported it. However, my experience is that the people who were behind 3RR think this is a good thing, rather than a bad one.

[everyking]

An excellent example of this would be the three revert rule. Edit wars are resolved not by examining the quality of the edit, but by...I don't know...what does the three revert rule measure? Who can wikilawyer better? Who can get a bigger gang of cabal members on their side? Who can create more sockpuppets? Who can get more of their friends to act as meatpuppets? It's certainly not merit.

3RR encourages the formation of gangs. That it would do so should have been obvious to those who proposed and supported it. However, my experience is that the people who were behind 3RR think this is a good thing, rather than a bad one.

Well, it allows a group to prevail over an individual, which tends to be a good thing, although there are exceptions. Speaking as someone who was skeptical of 3RR at the time it was implemented, I think it's been largely positive and effective in the sense that it discourages relentless, all-out brawling and forces people to talk and figure out some kind of agreement (or bring along enough friends so that they can crush the opposition--but bear in mind that majority support is a better basis for concluding a dispute than superior zealotry). It's been so long since 3RR was implemented that I think people have largely forgotten what led to it. Edit wars at that time (2004) got absolutely crazy; people would revert each other dozens of times in a day, forcing page protection (Anthony here was a major perpetrator, battling Wik across a vast array of articles). After a while protection would have to be lifted, and the insane edit warring would instantly break out all over again. 3RR more or less brought that under control--not just because of its direct effect, the threat of a 24 hour block, but because it reflected a reduced level of community tolerance for edit warring in general, and that had a broad effect on the project culture.

[Milton Roe]

An excellent example of this would be the three revert rule. Edit wars are resolved not by examining the quality of the edit, but by...I don't know...what does the three revert rule measure? Who can wikilawyer better? Who can get a bigger gang of cabal members on their side? Who can create more sockpuppets? Who can get more of their friends to act as meatpuppets? It's certainly not merit.

3RR encourages the formation of gangs. That it would do so should have been obvious to those who proposed and supported it. However, my experience is that the people who were behind 3RR think this is a good thing, rather than a bad one.

It's better than nothing, since without it, you really do get nothing more than an exercise in who can stay awake longest and focus on one automatic and inane task. That game truly goes to the individual obscessive-compulsive.

Going to 3RR forces "teamwork." It's not the most admirable kind of teamwork, necessarily (a criminal gang or group of raiders and spoilers is a sort of team, after all), but at least there's the first hint of cooperation in the use of force. Observe: the vestigial beginnings of organized, social, coercive behavior--- and thus, government!

[Doc glasgow]

Outside the articles no one cares about, Wikipedia is largely a war of attrition. If you are lucky the forces pushing one POV have as many patient under-employed soldiers as the ones pushing the opposite direction, and, with a bit more luck, the resulting stalemate looks something like neutrality to most people. However, if you've got kooks (or anti-kook cabals) with time on their hands you are largely sunk.

Little cabals can manage to control articles to their own POV if the rest of the community doesn't know enough or care enough to contest them. When the community gets involved, then the house POV generally prevails - it is largely secularist, materialist, and libertarian.

Just watch at the arbcom election when they usual suspects roll out to bully candidates to take the wiki-equivalent of the "Ethanol Pledge", I mean "will you swear on Holy Writ that SPOV = NPOV (and that Richard Dawkins is kinda cool)"

I noticed this proposal on AN yesterday: "Any account used primarily for advocating pseudoscience, fringe theories or other kookery shall be blocked indefinitely". Well, yup we all hate the Scientology POV pushers, the problem is, where does it stop?

"First they came .... for the pseudoscientists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a pseudoscientist. Then they came...." (Oh you know the poem!)

You know, Conservapedia may be biased junk, but at least it is honest junk.

This post has been edited by Doc glasgow: Thu 30th October 2008, 7:05pm

[Son of a Yeti]

Going to 3RR forces "teamwork." It's not the most admirable kind of teamwork, necessarily (a criminal gang or group of raiders and spoilers is a sort of team, after all), but at least there's the first hint of cooperation in the use of force. Observe: the vestigial beginnings of organized, social, coercive behavior--- and thus, government!

If we used the Marxist theory that would be probably going from primitive communism to slavery.

Marxist theory of history is obviously wrong (they failed to reach the communist phase after all) but this sounds like a nice description of recent advancement of Wkipedia community system.

[Milton Roe]

Going to 3RR forces "teamwork." It's not the most admirable kind of teamwork, necessarily (a criminal gang or group of raiders and spoilers is a sort of team, after all), but at least there's the first hint of cooperation in the use of force. Observe: the vestigial beginnings of organized, social, coercive behavior--- and thus, government!

If we used the Marxist theory that would be probably going from primitive communism to slavery.

Marxist theory of history is obviously wrong (they failed to reach the communist phase after all) but this sounds like a nice description of recent advancement of Wkipedia community system.

Marx or no, we're well past empire-slavery, and into the feudal system on WP. That was what you had after raiders decided to settle down after raiding, and just tax people instead of spoiling and raping and killing. But then the settled have to defend your little parcel against outside raiders, and thus you get a government in which local lords owe military service to a central authority (a crown or shogunate).

On WP, we know who the serfs are, and who the lords are, because we've all been "lorded over" by them, at one time or another. We're at the point, however, where the lords themselves are getting pretty tired of the king, and are about to start drafting a Magna Carta.

One day, much later, we may even see a civil war, a popular revolution, and a real parliament which includes representation for the serfs, of some kind (A house of "commons.") But first, I'm afraid the "beheading" of Jimbo I cannot be avoided.