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

[Cedric]

When this site went down briefly this summer due to a database attack, what could be termed a declaration of purposes was published a temporary page. It read as follows:

WR:NOT
Wikipedia Review is not a conspiracy, a team-building exercise, a role-playing game, or an experiment in collusion. It is not meant as a resource or training ground for those who would instill fear and misery in others. It does not exist to corrupt, but to expose corruption; it does not exist to tear down institutions, but to expose the ways in which institutions are torn down; it does not exist to hate, but is meant to expose hate in others. To expose these things is not evil. It is not a monolithic entity, nor the sum of its parts. Like-mindedness does not imply singularity of purpose; respect for the rights of one group does not imply disrespect for the rights of another. It is not intended to be predictable, consistent, or dull.

Imagine a world in which human beings are not user accounts, are not programmable, and are not mere words on a display screen. That's what we're doing...

Part of this statement was even included in a recreated article about Wikipedia Review on Wikipedia. My personal belief is that this is as good a summary of what WR is not supposed be about as any I have read.

But this necessarily begs the question: What is WR supposed to be about? A good part of the answer is contained in the above statement. A certain segment of our membership, sometimes referred to as “the old guard”, would say that WR is primarily about serious criticism of WP. I identify with this view. Of late, there appears to be an increasing segment of WR, composed of a significant number newer members, who also happen to be WP administrators and prolific editors, and who would appear to view to WR as more of a “Wikipedia Improvement Association”. That is, a place to exchange information, to gather and discuss problems with WP, and to plan improvements to WP, with a freedom of speech not available on WP itself.

This is not meant to be a thread devoted to which of these points of view should prevail here on WR, or even if it is desirable that one or the other prevail. Rather, it is meant to be addressed to phenomenon producing this situation: WP’s decline and impending fall.

It is becoming clear to even the most fervent wiki-apologists that something is really wrong with the current state of WP. A number of WP users have complained that editor conflicts have definitely been on the rise since 2004, and that the last two years on WP have been particularly bad. This is cited as an ever growing distraction from “building the encyclopedia”. In fact, edit wars over particular articles and other editor conflicts do appear to be growing at an ever increasing rate. In the early days of Wikipedia:Adminstrators’ noticeboard/Incidents (“WP:ANI”, WP’s drama center, founded in December, 2004), it usually took around one week to fill an archive. Now archives are filled about every two days.

So why all the drama? There are a number of reasons, all of which have been discussed here before at WR, and at some length. The most basic causes I identify as

THE SIX ROTTEN PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA

1. INSTANT EDITING OF ARTICLES. I believe that this one feature of WP is the single greatest factor causing WP’s decline and will largely cause its eventual destruction. This feature ensures that both the improvement and the marring of articles are impermanent, and that the battles against internet trolls, polemicists (in wikispeak, “POV pushers”), spammers, vandals, and ignorant interlopers will be everlasting (at least while WP still exists). It is this single feature of WP, more than any other, that gives rise to the MMORPG character of WP and makes ridiculous its claim of being an “encyclopedia”.

If the WP experience has proved nothing else, it has proved that there is indeed a reason that previously established print encyclopedias (wikispeak: “paper encyclopedias”) use editorial boards to vet suggested changes to content: they are needed. A number of members here (including myself) have suggested as a reform that all article pages (wikispeak: “articlespace”) on WP be “locked down”, editable only by an editorial board, qualified by knowledge and/or expertise in a particular subject area. WP could still retain its user pages and discussion pages, which in this case would be refocused upon users making suggested changes to an article, or suggesting new articles, for the editorial board to act on. The ability of knowledgeable amateurs to suggest changes, and the transparency of the process, would still distinguish WP from other encyclopedias.

What is chance of such a salubrious reform being enacted? Absolute zero. The reason for this simple enough: the “sole founder” and “God-King” of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales, says so. His 2001 pharaonic fiat reads in pertinent part:

"You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do. We must respect this principle as sacred.

Later, this “sacred” principle was made into the Third Pillar of The Five Pillars of Wikipedia, which “define the character of the project”. In other words, instant editing is sacred; it is off the table for discussion; and any suggestion of such a reform of WP is wiki-heresy for which the offender shall be banned and consigned to “off-wiki” hell. Never mind that the central administrative junta that largely runs WP (“The Cabal”) makes exceptions as to who constitutes the “anyone” that may edit WP (after all, certain individuals and IP ranges are unmutual and must be suppressed for the good of the wiki); the basic principle remains inviolable.

“So let it be written! So let it be done!”

(Tomorrow's installment: “NEUTRALITY” (“NPOV”) OF ARTICLES)

[Cedric]

THE SIX ROTTEN PILLARS OF WIKIPEDIA

6. BAD GOVERNANCE– THE REIGN OF THE LORDS OF MISRULE. This Sixth Rotten Pillar of Wikipedia has probably attracted more attention here on the pages of Wikipedia Review than have the five others. The names and exploits of certain abusive admins, the policies they choose to selectively enforce and why, the follies of the Arbitration Committee (“ArbCom”), and the battles between individual users, or gangs of users, are the subjects of frequent commentary here. WP has been called an anarchy, or alternatively, an absolutist dictatorship on a fascist or Stalinist model. While neither view is entirely correct, neither is entirely wrong either. WP has in fact managed in its own dysfunctional way to combine many of the worst elements of both anarchy and absolute dictatorship for its governance model.

Just what that governance model was meant to be is more than a little confusing. In April, 2002, The Jimbo issued a vaguely worded essay entitled “Wikipedia Governance”. The essay makes clear that Jimbo intended to retain a super-veto power as to policy issues; but as to other matters, all he seems to specify is that NPOV is absolutely central to WP governance, and that those who disagree should leave WP and “set up [their] own project”. A more recent page entitled “Power structure” is more detailed, but also more diffuse and confusing. There it is claimed that “Wikipedia's present power structure is a mix of anarchic, despotic, democratic, republican, meritocratic, plutocratic, technocratic, and bureaucratic elements.” Add a few diced carrots and some paprika and you’ve got goulash.

One is given to wonder if all of this confusion is largely or wholly intended. Perhaps so, but more often when one finds a large organization with such a diffuse and ill-defined governance model, the people running the organization are essentially making it up as they go along. Given WP’s sheer size and its largely open and instant editing policy, there is no way that WP’s admin corps of 1,600 has any hope of effectively policing the entire site. It depends greatly upon ordinary users to do grub-work like reverting vandalism, “recent changes patrol”, correcting grammar and punctuation in articles outside of the user’s areas of interest, etc. There are a number of users willing to do this, but they tend to burn out after a time, and then limit their activity to their subjects of interest, or give up on “the wiki” altogether. A great deal of WP is a constantly roiling mass, agitated by thousands of pot-stirrers. In terms of any meaningful quality control, WP is anarchy. While WP’s much vaunted “self-corrective process” does indeed exist, it is hardly any match for the pace of constant change, and has not been for quite some time.

Still, WP is not a perfect anarchy; it does indeed have some of the elements of an absolute dictatorship, but not a terribly efficient one. As noted above, core policies of WP, like “NPOV” and determining “consensus”, are vaguely worded or contain essentially illogical or unworkable formulas. This, in addition to the anarchy that otherwise prevails on WP, serves as a powerful incentive for admins to act in arbitrary fashion to suppress perceived “enemies of the wiki”, which not a few succumb to.

To some degree, WP governance does bears a resemblance to the government of Nazi Germany. A popular misconception about Nazi government is that it was ruthlessly efficient. Ruthless, to be sure, but efficient it was not. The Nazi bureaucracy was an absolute rabbit warren of numerous agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities. Bureaucratic infighting was thus ensured and was rather common. This was not the result of inadvertence or incompetence, but rather the result of Hitler’s intended design. With this bureaucratic chaos and the sweeping powers granted him under the Enabling Act, Hitler essentially made himself the German state constitution and the ultimate arbiter of disputes. All was designed to enhance his personal power and worked very much as intended. Where the analogy to Nazi government really falls apart, however, is right at the top. While it would appear that Jimbo always intended to retain some ill-defined special role in WP governance, there is no evidence that Jimbo ever intended for himself a role as central in WP as Hitler intended for himself in Germany. Indeed, Jimbo created ArbCom and other parts of the WP bureaucratic structure in order to take over responsibilities that he had previously exercised himself. In the last analysis, Jimbo is simply too much of a dilettante to be an effective absolute dictator.

If one wants to cast about for a historical analogy here, the Middle Ages in Europe or the Warlord Era of early 20th Century China provides a better fit. As so often happens in the wider world, anarchy is followed by feudalism, and this is what happened on WP. Note that the word “feudal” does not appear in the WP governmental goulash list above. I would suggest that that is no accident. Feudal systems by their nature arise from, and are sustained by, conflict; and by decree of The Jimbo, “Wikipedia culture is strongly opposed to Usenet-style flame wars”. But as a matter of ever increasing fact, WP is dominated by Usenet-style flame wars, and to extent it has any effective governance at all, it is exercised through a number of cabals (also supposedly verboten, according to The Jimbo). This has been documented time and again on the pages of WR. The cabals are truly the “sausage factories” of WP where “consensus” gets manufactured. Were it not for arbitrary misrule of these cabals, staking out and defending "their" territory; there would be no rule at all.

“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All those having business before the

Arbitration Committee draw near and demonstrate your fealty!”

(Tomorrow the final installment: THE END GAME)