QUOTE(tarantino @ Mon 28th September 2009, 12:29am)
Piotrus, the hub of the East European mailing list, is a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh. He published a paper earlier this year called
Governance, Organization, and Democracy on the Internet: The Iron Law and the Evolution of Wikipedia.
Fascinating. And very, very naive. Piotrus documents the evolution of a single policy document and generalizes from that to the entire project, making a host of unsupported assumptions and giving conclusions without establishing definitions and showing the process involved. He assumes, as well, that the policy document is binding, but there is no binding structure and, in practice, the document is frequently ignored.
He ignores the actual mechanisms of power and substitutes for them ideals. As an example, he quotes the current bylaws of the WMF regarding the election of Board members. Sure, the bylaws now provide that a majority of board members "shall be elected or appointed from within the community," and takes this as evidence of increased democracy:
"The December 2006 change of the bylaws makes the Foundation more democratic, lessening any oligarchic power of the Board by increasing the number of members elected from the community of editors to over half of the Board, and giving them control over the elections of the Board members from outside the community." But apparently he failed to notice mechanism, and the degree of power retained by the board, which is total. That bylaw doesn't require any elections at all! Nor does it bind the board to respect any particular election result.
However, sure, in actual practice, a majority of board members are elected, as he says. But through what process, and with what kind of participation? The vast majority of editors take no notice of "central processes," except when those impact them personally. Most editors would look at a list of candidates for ArbComm or the Board and not recognize any of the names. When one is part of the oligarchy, it looks like there is no oligarchy. And while, in theory, anyone can join the group of editors who participate in central or centralizing process, like policy pages, in fact, if you do so without "credentials," blocks are highly likely. It is much easier to be blocked for "meddling in policy" than for outright vandalism. I've seen indef blocks for this from first "offense," no warning, whereas blatant vandals typically get three warnings. The oligarchy is very self-protective.
Piotrus argues wikitheory as if the ideal were reality:
"Jimmy Wales and the Board are not officially responsible to the community but they can legally overrule its decisions. However, if they would ever use this power for anything other then resolving a legal issue in need of immediate attention, it would likely do irreparable damage to the community."He then notes that the community could, in theory, up and form their own wiki, if the Board unduly interferes. What is missed is the practical reality. In order to do this, the "community" would have to be
organized. There have been attempts to organize the community. When it has been done on-wiki, it has been crushed and salted, the strongest example being Esperanza. Esperanza encountered a difficult point in its organizational history; it might have overcome this, but, at that point, it was shut down by a huge MfD, I think there were something like 600 !votes in it. And what the Delete votes represented was an effort by a mob to prevent editors from voluntarily associating with each other. If there were two editors who wanted to "waste time that could be devoted to editing articles," why should the community prevent it? I can say why. Because off-wiki organization is the only threat that exists to the oligarchy's power. As long as the oligarchy controls the communication mechanisms of the "community," it can remain in control.
Wikipedia is not immune to the Iron Law of Oligarchy; it is, rather, an example of how basic a level the Law operates on. Piotrus never defines "organization" nor "oligarchy." If we look closely at what organization means, in a practical sense, it does indeed imply oligarchy, but Piotrus wants to have his organization and freedom from oligarchy at the same time. In this, he confuses Wikipedia with "the community." Wikipedia is organized, quite clearly. The community is not, except in ways that are almost entirely dependent on Wikipedia.
So what if the Community organizes? Would then the Iron Law hold? Of course it would! However, with some forms of organization, power isn't centralized at all, and the possibility of the community "taking their marbles and forming their own wiki" would be real, and practically possible, if it were needed. And any group dominating the Community organizational structure could face immediate and effective loss of power, if that power depended upon continued and constant support from the whole community, not just those centrally involved.
Wikipedia is thought of as a new form of organization; it isn't. How to set up a non-organized organization is a problem that was faced and solved long ago. In the Alcoholics Anonymous Traditions, Bill Wilson wrote: "AA as such ought never be organized, but we may set up service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve." What is the "AA" he referred to? Is it AA World Services, Inc.? Obviously not! That's a traditional board-controlled organization, with advisory elections,
just as with the WMF. AA is the "fellowship," the entire community of people who work together on their common problem. In the structure Wilson set up, AAWS collects no endowment, and operates on the voluntary contributions of members, and the amount of those contributions is restricted. There are no dues. Publications are sold, but at very low cost, enough to cover expenses. And the central office has no authority at all over local AA meetings or members. And there are many other details of interest.
Wikipedia is, as it were, a vast collection of committees with self-defined membership, one committee per page/talk page pair. Behavioral rules, however, are not self-defined, when there is conflict; rather, there is reference to more central authority, to the much more restricted group of administrators (0.01% of registered editors, smaller if we discount inactive admins) and then, failing some "resolution" there -- which often means simply a decision that is enforced, not an actual dispute resolution -- there is ArbComm. No oligarchy? No centralized power? It was a colossally naive claim by Piotrus.
What is true is that the power of the oligarchy is restricted. It cannot directly coerce behavior except the behavior of those who are attached to editing Wikipedia, and who can thus, to the extent of the attachment, be bullied into compliance.
Never mistake a description of the oligarchy as a complaint about it. It is what it is. My view is that oligarchy is indeed necessary and intrinsic to organization, and that oligarchies are largely functional, but that if our goal is maximized unity and real consensus, as it was with AA, measures must be taken to ensure that the oligarchy is actually trusted by the whole community, or at least by those who are affected by the oligarchy. A member of an AA meeting doesn't care if there is a secretary of some other meeting who is, say, overcontrolling. And if there is a secretary of the member's home meeting who is overcontrolling, the member can choose to tolerate it for a time or not. The saying in AA is "All it takes to start a meeting is a resentment and a coffee-pot." And it is truly about that easy. I'm not an alcoholic, but I've started meetings in similar organizations. Extremely simple; if there is any need at all, it's easily done, and the new meeting is immediately connected to the rest. And that facility is quite how AA managed to grow spectacularly, it is much more successful than Wikipedia! With no central control. Instead, the center is effectively controlled by the membershiip, who can choose to fund it or not. The New York office of AA could fall into the Hudson, and it would have very little effect on the members of the fellowship. They do not depend on it, but it depends on them.
What I see with Wikipedia, and too often, is that the oligarchy makes decisions that would not be supported by most registered editors, were there to be a community-wide discussion. I can see this by what happens as discussion expands, but expansion is so difficult and so time-consuming that it is, in itself, disruptive. If it is done on-wiki, and without structure, i.e., restricted participation or what I call "noise control." Off-wiki structures can be built by participants according to what works for them, they can be open or closed, depending on the needs of the members. "Service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve."
And to nobody else. The oligarchy may succeed in sanctioning some members of the Wikipediametric list, but it will be, ultimately, ineffective, just as all attempts to crush independent communication ultimately fail in the long run. Problem is, sometimes it takes generations for this to become clear! That list may shut down and be replaced by other lists which are more careful about how they conduct themselves. At some point, sufficiently strong off-wiki structures may start to have a significant effect, but whether this will come in time to avert collapse, I can't predict.
The present visible course leads to collapse. Burnout rates are becoming higher, and can be predicted to continue to increase. Wikipedia is phenomenally inefficient; when you are running a Ponzi scheme, that can be ignored, but not for a sustained project.
Dirty tricks cabal or just idle talk?
