It is very tempting to be a dramaqueen and post long rants blaming the work and its wales for running me off Wikipedia, but that'd be untrue. Besides someone would rightly quote this at me.

The truth is that wikipedia is a time-sucking drug. And that's fine, if you are having fun and/or you can still fool yourself with the Jimbofluff of making the world a better place. But it ceased to be fun for me a while ago, and my only consolation was that I might indeed be making the world a better place by helping to sort out, or at least reduce, Wikipedia's unacceptable collateral damage. But I can no longer kid myself on that score. So, can I have my life back please?

I am not cynical about Wikipedia. It is a brilliant idea, and whoever came up with it should be given full credit. It contains a host of excellent reference articles on everything from history and medicine to (yes) Pokemon. Sure, it will never be 100% reliable - but so what?

I salute the founder. And I salute the earlier pioneers who thought round corners and a developed this excellent system - flexible creative thinking. But they made one fatal mistake. They failed to leave Wikipedia with a decision making process that would allow "constitutional change" when new problems arose. And so the flexible creative thinking is not now in evidence. And they left a veto with any vocal minority who wanted to oppose anything.

I firmly believe that the majority of people who have studied it seriously, recognise at least aspects of the "BLP problem". But Wikipedia isn't governed by the thoughtful or the informed - it is governed by anyone who turns up. There are a small core of people who like playing wiki as an inhouse role-playing game and simply deny real-world consequences that might limit their freedom of action. There are a larger group who are too immature or lazy to think straight. And then there are all those who recognise "something must be done", but perpetually oppose the something that's being proposed in favour of a "better idea". The mechanism is rather like using a chatshow phone-in to manage the intricacies of a federal budget - it does not work for issues that need time, thought, responsibility and attention. I doubt this problem can be fixed - since it needs structural change to decision making - which is impossible for precisely the same reasons.

Of course the initial decision making process has a Godking as a safety valve. Alas, Olympus is now distant and probably impotent anyway.

I'm tempted to predict the apocalyptic demise of Wikipedia - that would be a great parting shot. But I think that's actually unlikely. It will plod on. Good people (like Brad - so leave him alone please) will eventually find some ways of tweeking the system to make it a little better. But radical change will take extreme outside pressure (lawsuits, media demands or some tragedy) and I really can't predict what that will be - it may be years off.

Anyway, I've had enough. I'm away to read some books (real ones with pages - and without "lol u suck"{{citation needed}} found at random places). No doubt I'll lurk awhile as well, no point in pretending otherwise.

I probably should have posted this to my wikipedia userpage, but I was in a hurry to leave and scramble my account. Maybe someone (who's not banned) would copy it there.

I also hope you will linger and participate here, Doc, if only to help orient anyone else who deigns to take a swing at bat on the BLP problem, etc.

Good choice, and many great reasons for leaving. I like to think that time tested systems that have worked for hundreds and even thousands of years, can be used as historical benchmarks with which we compare new and exciting governments and communities.

In many ways, Wikipedia is an exciting project save for the failure of it's government and absence of the checks and balances required to secure it's future. Any government run by people lacking in any meaningful amount of wisdom will surely fail. That is why we have age limits and term limits.

WP can be highly addictive for kids and adults and should be looked at in that way.

Wikipediots anonymous anyone?

I selected the following couplet as representing one of the critical tropes or turning points in Doc's envoi.


Many people — yea, verily, even who walk and quack among us — falter at this step and uncritically accept what further reflection unmasks as Yet Another Comforting Bit Of Mythology (WP:YACBOM).

My declamation of that fact rightfully raises a couple of further questions:

• Why Is It Mythology?
• Why Is It Comforting?

Exorcise For The Reader.

Jon

This is not really related to Doc glasgow, and can be moved to a separate thread, but relates to the post above. There is a clear tension between two of the themes that several WR contributors (including you, WOW) raise frequently. The first is that Wikipedia's leadership allegedly is dangerously youthful and inexperienced. The second is that experienced people, such as those with careers, should not participate in Wikipedia. I have not yet figured out how one reconciles these positions.

Newyorkbrad

I think if you stop viewing them as "positions," and more as "simple facts," you'll realize that there's no need to "reconcile" anything.

When the lunatics take over the asylum, should it be the responsibility of sane people to take up residence in the asylum, in order to make the asylum nicer for everyone?

One. Check.
Two. Huh?

Jon

Interesting point Brad, but it has a simple solution.

The OWNERS of the site (that would be the Wikimedia Foundation) need to step up and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY (that would be exercise the judgment and care of a publisher) for their freakin' website.

People who are making the place a mess need to be shown the door. People who are experienced and wise need to be given access and governance privileges that far exceed those held by they who are making the place a mess.

If that means shutting down the "anyone can edit" credo for three months (or three years) until they can sort out who is RESPONSIBLE for what, then so be it.

You'd have about 500 cry-babies screaming bloody murder, balanced against about 100 million avid users across the world who would simply applaud the decision, if they even thought 2 minutes about it in the first place.

This solution will never happen, of course -- the Kool-Aid is too richly concentrated around Jimbo's seat at the Board table. Therefore, it's our own responsibility to effect change from outside Wikipedia, if we collectively care enough about it to do so. The irony is, the external means to change Wikipedia are far more drastic and blunt than the unexercised internal means would have been.

We're working on a new externally-mandated BLP policy... we're about 50% complete with the initial draft that will set gears in motion. Stay tuned...

Greg

For what it's worth, Brad, I've also found it necessary to reckon that conundrum, albeit from a notably different perspective than you.

There are basically two camps here at WR regarding the fixability of WP. Doc Glasgow reflects the kind of person who just flipped their position on that divisive question. You and I might be the only two participants here who haven't made that judgment. Frankly, I think it's a toss-up, with the preponderance of evidence leaning the same way that just tipped Doc.

But there is more to the game than just choosing sides -- either trying to fix WP or trying to dismantle it as an unfixable failed system.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that most people don't even have a clear picture of what the Wikipedia system is or what its inherent social dynamics are given the kind of system it has grown to become.

So, to my mind, constructing an insightful model of Wikipedia as it is, vis-a-vis an imaginable system that might have been a better system model, is the missing step here. That's what I need to make the judgment that hangs in the balance.

Great observation and a defined, and refined, sense of wisdom, therein.
The answer is in two parts, actually.

The hierarchy in any government must contain leadership that is, in fact, held accountable to the real world. Real people with real names and job titles should be at the heart and at the top of the government of any corporation.

Wiki-type communities do not present with the above. A wiki is, a new form of government and, in fact, largely run by people that have, or are assumed to have, an unlimited amount of time and resources. My experience with the above is that those people with endless time are most likely "underemployed," retired, or in school. Ergo, the people most likely to be conspicuous users at MySpace and Wikipedia are going to be in one of the above categories.

Next, Wikipedia, in my opinion, really should have started as a "social site" for profit, and then the profits could actually support a "Foundation." The corporate structure would have needs for full time employees and professionals that know how to run a company and "SAY NO" when things get crazy.

A real live encyclopedia, and how it functions, can give us the second part of the answer from this simple equation. Everything at Wikipedia is, in fact, not original, correct? Where does it, "the knowledge," come from? It comes from the hands of real live people that have jobs.

If you, Brad, become addicted to typing into a keyboard and sharing your infinite wisdom at Wikipedia, for free, God bless you. A hobby for many people, it has become an obsession for people like you and JzG. If, in fact, you do it so much that you lose your real job and family and friends, then you have succumbed to a very powerful addiction and the power that the project holds over many people.

The wiki ends in a default state of average "everything" unless protected, because there is always going to be someone that thinks their way of thinking is the right way. There is no final stop.

The Foundation should really become the government and stand ready to have the final say in everything. Ultimately the project should be sold to Google or Microsoft.

For what it's worth, the tension I feel is that wikipedia has an anti-merit based leadership. Not in the sense that experts are occasionally driven away by nincompoops, even though this happens, but that the road to leadership has very little to do with actually creating the encyclopedia. On a daily basis I run across smart people who've been creating great content for years but who have little say in the project's direction and management. I also run across people on a daily basis who haven't created a single sentence of content in thousands of edits, and who pompously wander around wherever the drama is, when they aren't hamming it up in IRC, and endlessly lecture and create policy and push people around. It's the latter that set the tone of the project, but the former who's interests and temperament are aligned with the goals of the project, and who should be running the place but aren't.

I feel that a big part of the reason for this is the social dynamic that Jimbo set up, where people compete to get his ear rather than to write great content. Call it a cult of personality, or a social based leadership or whatever ... I think Essjay is the archetypal example; he rose to the very top but created almost no content (I think he wrote one stub).





The Godking spent all his political capitol keeping himself at the top instead of engineering a durable leadership mechanism.

Kudos, Pumpkin Muffins!

This is the most insightful analysis that I've ever read by you, and one of the best by anyone on this thread.

Jon

The foundation running the content side of Wikipedia is and always was utter nonsense. No, a self-run community was always perfectly feasible.

However, the Jimbofluff method of community decision making - "let's all chat till we nearly all agree and only then, with a group hug, do we change anything" simply didn't upscale.

The problems with it are that where the issues are reasonably complex and non-binary
1) Too many people = too many words = too much to read = "so I just vote with my instincts and don't read enough to be convinced otherwise"
2) Not everyone has the intelligence and education to follow the discussion.
3) The people with the time to persistently engage in discussion are often the people with less time and education (under/unemployed or young)
4a ) Perpetual rewind syndrome (I). You are just about convincing the people in the discussion, when new participants arrive and you have to start again, and again and again......
4b) Perpetual rewind syndrome (II) You've discussed 4 options and decided that 3 don't work - so you are fine tuning the last one. Just then someone joins and says "but I've got a better idea" - and names one of the options that it took 4 pages of discussion to reject.....
5) There's no manageable way of choosing between options. 90% of people may agree "anything but the status quo" but since all the alternatives only get 30% support each, the status-quo proponents can eternally deny that there's a consensus to change.

Basically, policy debates become the status-quo by attrition.

The solution was always obvious. Once a community grows beyond the face-to-face size, it needs a leadership structure. Thus either a powerful cabal emerges and everyone accepts their leadership (and that sort of used to be the case on Wikipedia when I joined - but they lost their grip on power to the masses) - or you have some form of representative leadership elected.

Now, Wikipedia (roughly) does have an elected body in arbcom. Arbcom isn't perfect, and gets bad-mouthed here, but I think even people here recognise that it is far saner than the foaming masses. That may seem ironic since the masses elected it, but elections serve to marginalise the vocal minorities who otherwise prevent changes.

I have no doubt that if a "policy making council" were elected, it would look something like arbcom in composition. And I have utterly no doubt that it would have taken huge steps in BLP management. I don't know one serving arb who doesn't see the major BLP problem and would not support radical changes (there's Raul - but he's always an exception). Even the popular "opposition" folk outside the arbcom Giano, Geogre and Bishonen are not at all soft on this issue.

So there's the solution. The problem? In order to create a body that can radically change policy, you have to radically change policy. Catch 22.

And since I'm not good at coups, that's where I gave up.

(The other irony is the tendency here to complain about "Jimbo the dictator". Well, I always wished he would be. Unfortunately, the throne is empty.)

Where did you lose your lunch?

I lost mine when he got to here:


Jon

I wish admins who resign would donate their accounts to WR rather than throw them away.

Yes, we have the same enantio-drama here.

And guess what part you are playing in it?

Jon

Thanks for your post here Doc. It must be a disappointment to reach this statge, but frankly, I'm not surprised. In my (admittedly limited) view of your activities, you seem far too ethical and possess too much integrity to remain in that cesspool (sorry to be frank, but there you have it).

I hope you take some solace in that you did your best to contribute, and when you didn't feel it was comfortable, you left, and spoke honest words as to why. That's the best thing you can do for any institution. Institutions and groups rarely learn and change as we wish they would. Perhaps your words will have effect later down the road. I'd put my money on at least one person remembering your commentary.



Ouch. Why? He's an asshole. As usual, Doc, you are far too nice.


This needs to be carved in stone. Or on the front page of Wikipedia. Or something.

Um, hm. It wasn't designed as a safety valve. "It" (aka, Jimbos retainer on dictatorship power) was a self-contrived construct.

I hope I wasn't too offensive here Doc. All the best, and well wishes. DL.

Experienced people should edit Wikipedia. In fact, they should run it.

But how far are we from that when a distinguished prize-winning physicist is run off by an aggressive empowered undergraduate? Who, by the way, is still an administrator.

Clear tensions in the posts of WordsofWisdom are academic relative to the very clear tension between Wikipedia's scholarly mission and the way Wikipedia treats scholars. People might acknowledge this problem, but what good does it do? No one is even proposing that R physicist should be even Seicer's equal on Wikipedia, either by sysoping him or by desysoping Seicer, much less in charge.

Of course, I don't believe that R physicist should be handed any tasks related to wikisavvy, nor do I think he'd want them. The real problem is that the project is being run by sysops. There is no sensible mechanism for directly determining content - e.g. putting R physicist and several other experts in charge - so every dispute is ultimately decided by sysops, according (formally) to precepts of wiki-behavior.

But as long as we're to be stuck with the system we have now, we could at least purge the admin ranks of those who are degrading the project through their incompetence. Instead, adminship is treated like nobility, some kind of birthright. An embarrassing dressing-down is sufficient for their fellow nobles to ask, "hasn't he suffered enough?"

It wasn't just one prize-winning physicist. There were three of them in that little drama. At least one of them works at a major US National Lab.

But look at the bright side - Seicer is still with us. Intentionally or not, that's who Wikipedia has chosen as the expert.

I realize this is somewhat off-topic for the thread as a whole, but as New York Brad brought it up…

Any solution to the expert problem is likely to be resisted, because each and every one of them involves handing real-world experts some actual authority, which would circumvent the decisive role of sysops, thus undermining their own authority. It really would be just a mop and a bucket, and for all the insincere humble talk, how many people ran for adminship for that? (Actually, I wonder how many run not for any tools, but just for the assurance that other admins won't push them around.)

Objections appeal to the inequality that this enshrines between expert and non-expert contributors, but a much greater - and unearned - inequality already exists between sysops and non-sysops.

It is completely intentional.

Seicer represents the target demographic.

Those other losers do not.

Jon

Sorry, Doc, you got part of the way there, but not all the way. The things that distinguish a cabal from "representative leadership" are the checks and balances that are put in place on their power. The limitations imposed by separations of power, public proceedings, trial by jury, stare decisis, avenues of appeal, etc have served over time to protect societies from their leadership. Arbcom has none of these -- it is a body that exists more-or-less solely to protect the status quo on Wikipedia, not to govern.

If Wikipedia wanted to reform (its ruling cabal clearly does not), it would have term limits on admins, a rigourous and public appeals process for admin decisions, drafted-member votes (as Kelly Martin has proposed), as well as your Policy Council (a legislature) and several other bodies, each serving to balance the power of the others. There is no hope of this ever happening.

Everyone in my field of expertise has a no-Wikipedia policy. And I mean, people who've never edited. It's just a done thing (or a 'not done' thing).

Ergo the material in that discipline is crap. C'est la vie.

I won't touch the thing with a 1000 foot pole. I can waste my time, if I wish, in a place less destructive and cruel.

Yes, but that's grade school kindergarten politics stuff. Real experts don't give a fly about being a sysop, and if they are categorically treated like crap, for ad-hoc entries, and punished for showing the very credentials that would normally accord them respect in the grown-up world (I don't mean "clout" I mean "respect" - there is a difference), then Wikipedia is left in the crap-zone.

Wikipedia is more a chat board and a video game than an encyclopedia. That needs to be better communicated, until policies change, to prevent damage to well meaning persons.

Not one of the people empowered in the project - most obviously Jimbo - are actually responsible for anything that's published. That's what allows the people who recognize the problem but hold up the solution. No one loses their bit if nothing is done.

What's needed is someone who is actually responsible for BLPs and is empowered to do something about it, including protecting BLPs, blocking contributors, dismissing administrators and sysoping others, and would be dismissed themselves if he/she didn't perform the job. As it happens, there is someone with this set of powers - bureaucrats - but they're not selected with this job in mind, and their powers - like those of every other empowered contributor to the project - aren't coupled with any responsibility.

Doc spoke to this problem in his essay when he observed that there isn't a single person who is actually obliged to help BLP victims. Who wouldn't want to be a bureaucrat or an administrator? You don't actually have to do anything! It's just free power.

What makes you so sure the "ruling cabal" doesn't want changes? Look at the evidence, on BLPs most of the people generally considered "cabalists" or "old timers" are strongly in favour of change. Indeed the admins most routinely attacked here JzG, SV etc are BLP hawks. The problem is that the cabal has utterly no power to change the structure. There are "checks and balances" all right - the problem is that they give inertia a veto over action

The rest of your post is silly. Of course there's no hope of any of this happening, because Wikipedia is structurally incapable of change. That's my point.

So it seems. I can't remember the last time I saw any substantial change in the way Wikipedia is (mis-)governed.

Well, in the real world, it's called "consultant salary." Sometimes with a 1099.

That said, even the real world is slowly being perverted all the time, in the eternal effort of human beings to construct a system in which they can make the decisions and keep the money, while somebody below them does the work and has to be responsible.

In our everyday lives we get somebody from over the Rio Grande to care for our yards and do our handiman stuff. If they complain, we deport them.

If you do recording work, you may find that the session musicians are far more skilled than the big name artists who get all the money for the cover. So why are they paid by the hour, and why will we probably never hear about most of them?

In academia, 60% of the teaching is now done by "adjunct professors". That means guys on a yearly contract that nobody has to renew, and nobody is responsible for renewing. Do these poor schmucks advance as academics, with real tenured positions? Unless they are black HIV-pos lesbians doing the Marcarena in a wheelchair, the answer is no. And as for graduate students, the Chinese fill the role that Mexicans do for the yardwork.

And as for Wikipedia? Well, you know the story there. The whole human condition causes me to gag, every so often.

Those of the cabalisti who are supporting the BLP solution are those whose primary interest is in inserting their point of view into controversial articles unimpeded. SlimeVirgin has her "animal rights" topics, Jayjg his Israel and Judaica articles, and JzG just has his head up his ass.

The reason that the BLP solution is being supported is that, in part through your efforts, it is seen as the absolute least that can be done, firewalling the rest of Wikipedia from change.

Perhaps, but not a silly as spending three years of one's life on Wikipedia! Enjoy your freedom.

May you live long enough for something other than this bullshit to be the only thing I remember you for.

Where Wikipedia works really well is in non-controversial subjects that a single editor, with a little copyediting help from a few others, can tackle and build some good articles out of. For example, the article on El Greco is simply outstanding and it wouldn't surprise me if it's the best article on the Internet on the subject.

The POV-pushing that occurs in some subjects, notably Israel/Palestine, animal rights, and global warming, among others, is unacceptable but there isn't really an easy way to deal with it. If you're not careful you can get sucked into burning hundreds of hours combatting the efforts of these agenda-driven editors, some of whom are highly-visible and involved admins, with little progress to show for it. Notice how long it took to deal with the Gary Weiss/Naked Short Selling issue? Wasn't it something like two years? Of course, it didn't help that a few prominent admins were trying to suppress investigation into the issue, but, you'll notice that a few prominent admins are also involved in the problematic topics I mention above.

I know it would increase bureacracy, but Wikipedia needs some kind of governance body, kind of a configuration control board, whose decisions on content and policy disputes are decisive and binding. The ArbCom doesn't address these issues adequately, because it focuses on user conduct. I'm not sure if something like that would work, though, in a project that is 99% volunteer run.

Cla68, other large open source projects, like Debian and Ubuntu, do quite well.

Both of them have a governance system base on the Social Contract Model.

Google also has a variant of a Social Contract with its employees.

Not being a qualified anthropologist, but it strikes me that all human societies, and probably most animal societies evolve some hierarchy of control, even those which claim to reject it. It seems naive to hope that the Wikipedian society can continue as a form of anarchy when, worldwide, society has rejected that model of co-existence.

There are any number of models of governance that Wikipedia could chose, and the WMF would be quite at liberty to impose one of these forms of organisation. Such an organisation could be imposed by the WMF without that organisation being controlled by the WMF - keeping their hands off from content (like selecting the judiciary while the judiciary are not answerable to the politicians for their decisions). The vast majority of editors would find such a change irrelevant as they type away.

WMF should stop fiddling while Rome burns.

I think you're onto something there. The project needs to do something along these lines, because not doing something is causing some long term damage. Two years ago when I first became involved in Wikipedia, I noticed that when I started an article, within hours several other editors would come by and help improve the formatting, add categories, add an infobox, add weblinks, etc. That rarely happens anymore. I'm sure there are various reasons why this level of altruistic participation has decreased, but, I think one of them is that many have become disillusioned with the whole effort. If some fair, effective, adult supervision was added, I think that might help.

Isn't the problem that if they had such a "configuration control board" they would be a content provider and thus legally liable for all content?

Have you been reading my posts over the past few months, Cla68?

This, I am convinced, is the solution to the problem. It's vital is that sysops must not be allowed to be part of or otherwise coopt such a system (unless, of course, they resign as sysops.) Instead, the only criteria will be real-world expertise with verified credentials or track record of reasonably neutral and quality contributions in a particular subject matter.

Besides the quality-control benefits, this will put an end to most of the flame-warring, including the ritualized flaming of the noticeboards and RfArb, as most (though not all) user-conduct allegations, valid or not, are meant to gain an advantage in a content dispute - further, much of this bad behavior wouldn't occur were it not for frustration with issues that are decided, but never resolved, through edit-warring and interminable discussion. The undocumented power of the sysops to govern the project through the often biased or plainly incompetent resolution of conduct disputes can be checked.

This class should not consist of contributors granted a collection of generalized powers decoupled from tasks at hand, but of specific powers over particular subject matters with specific responsibilities for the articles in which they wield them, such that, if there is misinformation in mainspace, the culprit (by will or negligence) can be identified and dismissed.

A project as prominent as Wikipedia needs visionary leadership.

I frankly don't know where that leadership is going to come from, at this stage of the game.

Wikipedia is like a rudderless ship.

I am sure that it is entirely feasible for WMF to impose systems and control while maintaining separation.

For example, they could determine that the solution was to hire 12 good men and true whose job it was to be full time professional arbitrators of all matters. WMF could form and fund an independent trust to employ them, providing a suitable constitution for that organisation. I am sure that someone legal could devise all sorts of appropriate mechanisms.

In the real world that structure is called a "corporation."

The hierarchy in any government or corporation, must contain leadership that is, in fact, held accountable to the real world. Real people with real names and job titles should be at the heart and at the top of the government of any corporation.

Wiki-type communities do not present with the above. A wiki is, a new form of government and, in fact, largely run by people that have, or are assumed to have, an unlimited amount of time and resources. My experience with the above is that those people with endless time are most likely "underemployed," retired, or in school. Ergo, the people most likely to be conspicuous users at MySpace and Wikipedia are going to be in one of the above categories.

A real live encyclopedia, and how it functions, can give us the second part of the answer from this simple equation. Everything at Wikipedia is, in fact, not original, correct? Where does it, "the knowledge," come from? It comes from the hands of real live people that have jobs.

The wiki ends in a default state of average "everything" unless protected, because there is always going to be someone that thinks their way of thinking is the right way. There is no final stop.

Yes, but there's an odd phenomenon that happens online that doesn't happen anywhere else. In normal human societies (and actually, in all mammals that are social) the "kids" go looking for the "adults," and seek supervision actively. Children and kittens follow adults around to see what they're doing and copy that. But at WP, they've screwed this up by removing all tags and labels that tell people who the mature adults are. We can't even tell who the men and women are. This causes the Lord of the Flies Syndrome (WP:LOFS), as we've remarked over and over.

So, when person A spends a lot of time fruitlessly arguing general relativity with person B, and finally finds out person B not only doesn't know any differential geometry, but doesn't even know they need to know differential geometry, a lot of time has been wasted. Which would not have been wasted in the real world when the gray-bearded professor confronts the snot-nosed kid. Unless the kid is Wolfgang Pauli or something, but there are ways to correct for prodigies-- they are second order perturbations that should not bother us in constructing a fundamental system of government-by-experts. (In the real world, 20 year-old Pauli actually wrote a book-length standard encyclopedia article on relativity which impressed the 41 year-old Einstein immensely, but Pauli had been supervised by 52 year-old Sommerfield, and so on).

Worse still, when people have tried to re-inject some of the social-tags for age and expertise that allow society to work in the real-world, Wikipedia has actively resisted this. That resistance doesn't come from the kids. I once thought it did, but I see now that it comes directly from Jimmy Wales.

Hey, Wales! You screwed this up, big time. YOU. This feature is your invention, a byproduct of your core policies, and it is completely your responsibility.

I think it's realistic to expect volunteers, anonymous or not, to be reluctant to accept responsibility for making the final, binding decision on content for a BLP. But someone's got to do it if we want to resolve the problems with POV-pushing in BLPs and other articles for that matter.

When WP started, it was a pleasure yacht. Jimbo knew how to skipper a pleasure yacht.

But then WP evolved into a rudderless battleship without a captain.

I prefer to think of WP as a giant bus filled with freaks hurtling through the desert at great speed, without slowing down for a second. The freaks inside think this is fantastic.

When the bus begins to enter populated areas the bus doesn't slow down. Problems arise and the bus runs starts hitting pedestrians and other drivers. Knocking down anything that gets in its way. When people try to stop the bus in its tracks, the freaks inside scream about their freedoms and their desire to drive as fast as they like no matter what. The bus hurtles on out of control.

More and more people inside and outside try to stop the bus by any means necessary to stop the carnage, but no one can get into the drivers seat, or grab hold of the wheel and put on the brakes.

What happens next...?

I don't mean to pick on Cla68 and Milton — I could have made the following observation almost at random in WP+WR = W(P+R) spacetime.

If there is anything like the Eternally Recurring Fallacy (ERF) about Wikipedia, it is the notion that its dynamics is driven exclusively by Tertium Non Datur Dyadic Cyclones taking place solely between two classes of Wikipediots — for example, the shift-changes that occur on the plane of experts and novices, among many others — all ungoverned by, er, Control.

The motive for languishing in this false and untenable assumption is the very engine that drives every con game — the mark simply prefers not to believe that he or she is living in such a world that has such perfidious creatures in it.

Control has screwed nothing up.

Control is right on the money.

Control is right on the mark.

Jon

Well, someone(s) needs to take the wheel. We need an adult to drive this bus. I remember asking some of the Foundation board member candidates policy questions and their answers always were, "It's up to each individual project to govern themselves". Okay then, en.Wikipedia needs a governance board(s). The question of accountability may be a thorny one. The governance board members need some legal protection, or else no one is going to want to do it.

I was thinking of more drastic measures myself.

It is a content provider.

We all know this. Jimbo has editor in chief powers. The problem is that the legislative and judiciary in the U.S. are utterly incognizant of this patent, obvious fact.

Thass becuz we have Separation Of Powers (SOP), so the judiciary and the legislature are not allowed to infringe on the Patent Office.

Jon

bad-dum-bump!

Are they? I've never seen any proof to this effect.

Can someone point me to even one case remotely analogous to Wikipedia, which shows that it would be protected under section 230? Just one, please. As it is, I suspect we're repeating the mantra of their own defense.

This is the closest example of which I'm aware, and it's just not that close.

http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2003/20030813.asp

I assume that it would protect Wikipedia from an analogous situation: say I open an account impersonating someone else, including defamatory misinformation, or some other defamation from userspace. The provision of userpages is very much like a "service," and the Wiki interface, for its contributors, is "interactive." Mainspace - the articles themselves - are no different from any other online publication, aren't anything like a "service", nor are they anymore "interactive" for the reader than is, say, www.newyorktimes.com.

Basically, it comes down to a claim that Wikipedia is analogous to a distributor, such as a bookseller or a blog hoster, rather than to a publisher. What are they distributing, diffs?

They're assembling those diffs into a single text, which purports to be an article about the subject. Contrast this with a message board of discrete, signed statements. You're not even allowed to sign mainspace: the only signature is at the upper left and says, "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."

FWIW, I absolutely agree with this - the fact that those in control of Wikipedia, and all Wikimedia projects, choose to deliberately avoid the appearance of direct involvement is just part of the brilliance of the overall design. These people aren't "editors" or "admins" or "bureaucrats" or "stewards" or any other arbitrary designation in a membership record in a database. They're people who have hit on a scheme to use free labor to build a valuable asset, and one day they will cash in on that asset. The apparent anarchy of the community isn't something they're simply not concerned about, it's something they cultivate. They want envelopes to be pushed, and their apparent shirking of responsibility is really just a smokescreen.

Their goal of growing the database as cheaply as possible is a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to replace traditional control structures within publishing, technology, and academia with new structures that place them at or near the top, all without their having to spend a dime, relatively speaking, to get there.

People who care about preserving cultural traditions and social structures in those areas should naturally see them as a threat, but because they're giving the product away, most people want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Which, in turn, is the difference between the successful con artist and the failed one - the successful con artist gets the benefit of the doubt, and the failed one doesn't.