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.

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

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

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.

Attn: Tony Sidaway

Take a number,
and sit down.

Jonny

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

Jonny is brilliant when he stops trying to be punny.

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

His peculiar argot could use a translation into English.

Remember June 16th is Bloomsday.

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

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


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.

Bollicks!

Jonny

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 . . . .

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!

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


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?


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...