Wikimedia: Power, Leadership, and Movement Roles Options Rating

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Wikimedia: Power, Leadership, and Movement Roles by Eugene Eric Kim

Friend and long-time Wikipedian, Phoebe Ayers, expressed strong concern over the Wikimedia Foundation’s planned growth. The Foundation had said that it planned to grow from 40 employees to almost 200 by 2015, and to go from $15 million to $50 million in annual revenues, representing an annual growth rate of about 40 percent.

On the surface, Wikimedia’s structure looks very different from traditional organizations. It’s open, it’s bottom-up, it’s flexible, and technically, no one is in charge.

When you look a little deeper, however, it starts to look startingly familiar. There are hierarchy, committees, and titles. There are administrators and stewards. There is a long list of policies, including one called WP:NOBUREAUCRACY. Despite this formal policy prohibiting bureaucracy, there is also the formal position of “bureaucrat,”

When I first started working on Wikimedia strategy, I was surprised by how culturally engrained these structures were in the projects ... Wikimedia seems to be all about rules.

[Kelly Martin]

My best explanation for this is that most people who come to Wikimedia are drawn more by the notion of free knowledge than by open collaboration. Over 80 percent of Wikimedia contributors are single men in their teens and 20s — in other words, students. They are immersed in some of the most rigid institutional structures in our society — schools — and they have little experience outside of that. When they organize, they naturally draw on what they know — structure.

Hey, someone who actually seems to understand something about the psychology of Wikimedia contributors! We can't have that, no no no.

Of course, much of the rest of the post is kool-aid induced swillage, but at least there's some germ of intelligence in there that hasn't been stomped out by the Wikijuice. The fact that he sees the solution to the problem created by all these teenaged boys as being "more talk" indicates that he still has his head up his ass. You can't make people equal by simply pretending that they are equal.

[Jon Awbrey]

My best explanation for this is that most people who come to Wikimedia are drawn more by the notion of free knowledge than by open collaboration. Over 80 percent of Wikimedia contributors are single men in their teens and 20s — in other words, students. They are immersed in some of the most rigid institutional structures in our society — schools — and they have little experience outside of that. When they organize, they naturally draw on what they know — structure.

Hey, someone who actually seems to understand something about the psychology of Wikimedia contributors! We can't have that, no no no.

Of course, much of the rest of the post is kool-aid induced swillage, but at least there's some germ of intelligence in there that hasn't been stomped out by the Wikijuice. The fact that he sees the solution to the problem created by all these teenaged boys as being "more talk" indicates that he still has his head up his ass. You can't make people equal by simply pretending that they are equal.

I tried posting an invitation to wider discussion twice now, but it hasn't shown up. AGFing, maybe their adminbot takes weekends off, but maybe you would have more luck.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)