http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipe...ber/018217.html

I'm not going to bother quoting the best parts of it, you need to read the whole thing.

<H1>[Wikipedia-l] A proposal for the new software</H1>
<B>Jimmy Wales</B>
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TITLE="[Wikipedia-l] A proposal for the new software">jwales at bomis.com
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<I>Thu Oct 18 19:22:46 UTC 2001</I>
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Let me raise a potentially delicate social issue. :-)<br><br>

One of the wonderful things about the wiki software, and something that has served us very well so far, is that it is totally wide open. I suspect that any significant deviation from that would kill the magic of the process.<br><br>

On the other hand, we really are moving into uncharted territory. Wikipedia is already, as far as I know, the most active and heavily trafficked wiki to ever exist. It seems a virtual certainty that the wide open model will start to show some strain (primarily from vandalism) as we move forward.<br><br>

(Even now, we see "only" about 5,000 unique visitors a day. Imagine when that it 50,000 or 150,000. Or more.)<br><br>

I have this idea that there should be in the software some concept of "old timer" or "karma points". This would empower some shadowy mysterious elite group of us to do things that might not be possible for newbies. Editing the homepage for example. We already had one instance of very ugly graffiti posted there (a pornographic cartoon).<br><br>

Some principles that we should use if/when we move in that direction:<br><br>

1. Cabal membership is available to anyone who puts in time -- there should be no ability by the part of existing cabal members to blackball anyone. The reason for this principle is that we don't want there to be a temptation to ideological blackballing. Anyone who shows up and sticks around for a couple of weeks can be trusted enough to give total freedom.<br><br>

Cabal membership should not give anyone any super powers, just a handful of little things, like locking and unlocking the HomePage, or placing a temporary block on an IP address or UserID.<br><br>

3. Newcomers should not have to know or realize that they are restricted in any way from doing things that some old timers can do. We should always leave things as open as possible, not requiring login, registration, etc.<br><br>

3. Of course, as owner of the physical machine where Wikipedia is located, I always retain absolute dictatorial power over everything, if necessary. So if someone gets cabal membership and uses it to vandalize, I could revoke the status unilaterally.<br><br>

Basically, I think we always want to make a distinction between true vandalism and mere un-encyclopedic behavior. We want to develop little tools and tricks to help us block true vandalism, while keeping things totally open for people to *work for consensus* on article content. The "New Age" debate was good and healthy, and never rose to the level of vandalism.<br><br>

-- <br>
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* You can edit this page right now! *<br>
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In a letter to wikipedia-l, I injudiciously used the word 'cabal' and made reference to a 'shadowy mysterious elite'. This was a very poor choice of words on my part. I thought that many or most people would understand it for what it was -- the notion of a non-existent cabal, allegedly controlling things, when in fact there is not one, would be well understood.<br><br>

Let me be clear. In wikipedia, there should be no elites. All legitimate participants, no matter how much they may disagree on political, philosophical, or other issues, should always be able to edit pages in the same fashion as they can now. Only behavior that truely and clearly rises to the level of vandalism should be fought with extremely cautious uses of software security measures.<br><br>

The "cabal" as I envision it (and as is clear from the letter where I unfortunately first used the term) is not a "cabal" at all. It consists of everyone who participates, with membership completely open and automatically and transparently so. Newcomers should not feel or notice any serious restrictions at all, so that we preserve the wide open feel of the community.<br><br>

I think that in practice, there will always been a shifting group of 100-200 people who are active in the community, and these people will be "the cabal that is not a cabal". There is nothing special about these people, other than that they are here, they are working and editing, and their consensus will of course naturally rule the day.<br><br>

I hope this eliminates any fear that I am planning now or in the future to create some group of special elites.<br><br>

I want to stress again: I regret ever using the word 'cabal', and that I am and will remain in the future forever opposed to any form of hierarchy or elitism, while at the same time remaining open to the idea that some minimalistic security measures will be necessary to permit the active participants to defend the community from vandals.