The Future, Growth of Wikipedia; faces in crowds Options

[Rootology]

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...une/074025.html

Discuss? Lets keep this one civil, to give people less of an excuse to bring out whored up BADSITES arguments. It's a question of sociology, here, I think, and the email touches on quite a few things that are of interest.

[GlassBeadGame]

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...une/074025.html

Discuss? Lets keep this one civil, to give people less of an excuse to bring out whored up BADSITES arguments. It's a question of sociology, here, I think, and the email touches on quite a few things that are of interest.

What Joe describes is an entity that can no longer be governed by anything that can meaningfully be termed "consensus." Thus wishes to be kind to WP will attribute this to having "grown" past some critical tipping point. That is not an accurate description of what has occurred. WP's opportunity to be governed by consensus has been pissed away by selfish, narcissistic users who have assembled cliques of sycophant followers. The SVs and their little Ryulongs. They may be driven by agenda that make sense in the wider world, even if evil, but often they only seek status, domination and manipulation for it's own sake. This will make WP a harsher and more brutal environment, unsuited for minors and vulnerable people. It will make WP less responsive to the reasonable expectations of the wider community (such BLP victims). It will mostly make WP not worthwhile from the viewpoint of sincere editors.

I believe that this has resulted from the vacuum caused by a weak board of trustees, irresponsible under-staffing of project, lack of key professional advice and counsel, and an absentee "god-king." It appears that Jimmy Wales is about to unleash some form of initiative. It don't know what this will be about. If it involves reigning in this "Lord of Flies" environment, I think things have gotten to the point that it might not be that easy anymore. Maybe he will just slap some banner adds on the stake with the pig's head.

This post has been edited by GlassBeadGame: Tue 5th June 2007, 5:50pm

[GlassBeadGame]

What a dick.

Further comment uncharacteristically fails me for the moment.

[Jonny Cache]

What a dick.

Further comment uncharacteristically fails me for the moment.

In the spirit of uncharacteristic behaviour, I'll avoid Googling up remarkably similar examples of Flamous Last Words from Dicktators of Crises Passed, and simply remind you of Ken Lay's last report to his flock, which Sidaway's encomium eerily echoes.

It's officially Dikipedia now ...

Jonny

[Jonny Cache]

Subj: Re: Why are veterans so militant of late; The Future.
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 00:46:20 +0100
From: Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway-...@public.gmane.org>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l-...@public.gmane.org>

My take on these things.

In January, 2006 I predicted that as the community grew administrators would exercise more discretion and start to handle disputes in a fairly autonomous manner, with arbitration taking a backup role. This is because arbitration doesn't scale and admins do.

I think that's happened pretty much as I predicted.

Another thing that has happened is the growth in the number of people who are basically second class Wikipedians, because they aren't yet acculturated, and they probably never will be. Some of these people are even administrators. So we've got a lot more stupid clutter on talk pages, a heap of stupid user categories, and those pesky old userboxes. Meh, we've worked around it, and we'll deal with it if it becomes a serious problem.

Wikipedia, though, has remained under the effective control of a pretty small part of the community. And the core community has grown more effective as it has learned what it does and doesn't want the encyclopedia to be, which problems need to be dealt with quickly and which can just be ignored. Robots now perform, in a matter of hours, feats that would have taken weeks in the past. Problem users who would have made it to arbitration before now end up being blocked indefinitely, because we recognise the behavior patterns and we know that the prognosis for rehabilitation is very low indeed.

Through trial and error, we've reached the threshold of a radically different vision of the encyclopedia regarding the treatment of living people. Most of the pieces are in place, and the level of acceptance is high. The core community will get behind it and make it work.

So the way I see it, we've met and passed the test of our Long September. We have learned to manage change and diversity, and the quality of our articles has grown as we have learned to manage them by subject area. We're slowly but surely overhauling some of our more decrepit and non-functional institutions and processes, totally bypassing them where necessary, changing the ground rules where that can be done in a sustainable fashion. I'm very optimistic about the future.

While we're being out of character, let me insert an uncharacteristically positive note, as there really is an upside to The Sidawinder's statement ...

Much like the moment when Jimbo Wales handed out cigars at the birth of the Cabal — never mind the host of wikipaternity suits that followed — it is in these moments of their supremely self-satisfied smugness that we are blessed with rare moments of honesty from the Cabal Core, when they feel so confident of their complete control over all contingencies that they drop their pretense of caring about that motley array of mutually contradictory ideals that so bedazzles the peanut gallery and blurt out, however briefly, their actual interest, their real POV.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Wed 6th June 2007, 3:56am

[Somey]

In the spirit of uncharacteristic behaviour, I'll avoid Googling up remarkably similar examples of Flamous Last Words from Dicktators of Crises Passed, and simply remind you of Ken Lay's last report to his flock, which Sidaway's encomium eerily echoes.

The way I read this encomium is that Tony thinks the "cabal," as we call it, is doing just fine - and if anything, is in a better position than ever to assert complete control over the fundamental workings of the site. Presumably Tony feels that he's still in the so-called "cabal," and that his recent resignation from adminship doesn't affect his standing among the core leadership. This kind of blurry, rose-colored view of what WP has become is really just Tony's way of assuring himself that he's still "on course."

This is nothing more than simple apple-polishing... in effect, Tony is trying to set himself up as the Grima Wormtongue of Wikipedia.

[Jonny Cache]

This is nothing more than simple apple-polishing ... in effect, Tony is trying to set himself up as the Grima Wormtongue of Wikipedia.

Attn: Tony Sidaway

Take a number,
and sit down.

Jonny

[GlassBeadGame]

This kind of blurry, rose-colored view of what WP has become is really just Tony's way of assuring himself that he's still "on course."

Rose-colored glassess and side-blinders in one optical instrument.

[Daniel Brandt]

Much like the moment when Jimbo Wales handed out cigars at the birth of the Cabal — never mind the host of wikipaternity suits that followed — it is in these moments of their supremely self-satisfied smugness that we are blessed with rare moments of honesty from the Cabal Core, when they feel so confident of their complete control over all contingencies that they drop their pretense of caring about that motley array of mutually contradictory ideals that so bedazzles the peanut gallery and blurt out, however briefly, their actual interest, their real POV.

Jonny

Jonny is brilliant when he stops trying to be punny.

[GlassBeadGame]

Jonny is brilliant when he stops trying to be punny.

Jonny's always brilliant. Sometimes he's a little inaccessible, though.

[dtobias]

Jonny's always brilliant. Sometimes he's a little inaccessible, though.

His peculiar argot could use a translation into English.

[GlassBeadGame]

Jonny's always brilliant. Sometimes he's a little inaccessible, though.

His peculiar argot could use a translation into English.

James Joyce....The most incomprehensible, and thus the greatest, author of the English language.

---Woody Allen

Remember June 16th is Bloomsday.

[JohnA]

Jonny's always brilliant. Sometimes he's a little inaccessible, though.

His peculiar argot could use a translation into English.

Jonny has never used just one word when a couple of thousand can make the point just as well.

[Somey]

Just to get things slightly back on track here...

Attn: Tony Sidaway
Take a number,
and sit down.

Presumably what Jon is saying here is that there are a whole buncha' Grima Wormtongues on WP, or rather Grima wannabes. But I think what makes Tony unique is his history with the high mucky-mucks. He's never going to be satisfied with being an outsider, but not being an admin anymore has its advantages too - he doesn't have to take the blame for when things go wrong to anywhere near the extent that he would have before.

Anyway, this thread supposedly started with a link to a WikiEN-L posting suggesting that WP had reached a "tipping point" at which no one voice could realy make a difference in the way things are run. The title further suggested that we're seeing a rise in "veteran militancy," with four contributing factors:

1. AN/I - Too busy
2. User counts - Higher than ever and still rising
3. Admin counts - Also still rising
4. Knee-jerk over-reactions - Admins having to adjust to the idea that personal control of WP by long-term leadership may no longer be possible, and lashing out when they become frustrated about it

Presumably points 2 and 3 are "givens," and point 1 is the logical extension of points 2 and 3. The real issue is whether or not the knee-jerk overreactions are primarily due to overpopulation of the site, or something else...

Personally, I think it's more than just overpopulation. This is what I like to call "maintenance-phase politics" - as the number of new-article topics decreases, and the opportunities for less-established users to take personal ownership of significant content areas evaporates (due to more established users having already taken them), you get more and more people wanting to participate in rule-making, or what Dave Gerard likes to call "process wonkery." This is where the AGF and "Don't bite the n00bs" rules start to rankle on the leadership - they desperately want these people to go away, but they won't, and they can't make them go away without risking censure from the overall community. Nevertheless, they're getting pissed off more often than ever before, and that's only going to get worse too.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is still as addictive as ever, but the new element of territorial conflict only makes the site more damaging to afflicted individuals.

The political complexity of WP's internal workings is already beyond what most people can possibly grasp, and that's going to increase too, believe it or not. There will be lots of defections, both among the establishment and among the newer arrivals, but ultimately I don't think they'll have a choice - they'll have to break up WP into smaller administrative units, with some sort of more sophisticated interwiki linking scheme. They should have done that 2-3 years ago, of course, and actually might have, if it weren't for the fact that the place is run mostly by control freaks.

[Jonny Cache]

Jonny has never used just one word when a couple of thousand can make the point just as well.

Bollicks!

Jonny

[JTM]

<snip>

The political complexity of WP's internal workings is already beyond what most people can possibly grasp, and that's going to increase too, believe it or not. There will be lots of defections, both among the establishment and among the newer arrivals, but ultimately I don't think they'll have a choice - they'll have to break up WP into smaller administrative units, with some sort of more sophisticated interwiki linking scheme. They should have done that 2-3 years ago, of course, and actually might have, if it weren't for the fact that the place is run mostly by control freaks.

One thing to remember about Wikipedia is that no one gets paid. Once the psychologically normal have had their fill of Sinbad murders, Essjay fictions and the bizarre conduct of various administrators, there will be no one left except the psychologically abnormal that are into domination, bondage and a variety of obsessive conduct. Plus vandals. Kind of like BDSM with graffiti. I'm sure the quality of articles will reflect this.

[Cedric]

One thing to remember about Wikipedia is that no one gets paid. Once the psychologically normal have had their fill of Sinbad murders, Essjay fictions and the bizarre conduct of various administrators, there will be no one left except the psychologically abnormal that are into domination, bondage and a variety of obsessive conduct. Plus vandals. Kind of like BDSM with graffiti. I'm sure the quality of articles will reflect this.

JTM's vision of Wikipedia?:

Not that I disagree, incidently . . . .

[LamontStormstar]

What a dick.

Further comment uncharacteristically fails me for the moment.

I saw the link and thought, "I wonder if that's Tony Sidaway. He gets accused of being a dick often."

Then I clicked it and it was!

[Lir]

Another thing that has happened is the growth in the number of people who are basically second class Wikipedians, because they aren't yet acculturated, and they probably never will be. Some of these people are even administrators.

So much for Jimbo's "loving little community" -- clearly, him and his ilk have no objections to a caste-ridden society.

Wikipedia, though, has remained under the effective control of a pretty small part of the community.

If Wikipedia is under the effective control of a small minority, doesn't that mean that consensus is not being achieved, and that the overwhelming majority of users do not support the ruling class?

Problem users who would have made it to arbitration before now end up being blocked indefinitely, because we recognise the behavior patterns and we know that the prognosis for rehabilitation is very low indeed.

So much for due process or the right to defend oneself against allegations made by cabalists. Of course, as Jimbo is so fond of lamely reminding us, Wikipedia is not an experiment in radical democracy -- but it does seem to be an experiment in radical feudalism...