Netizenship/Wikipedia

It's a good idea - but it only works in practice, not in theory.--Common community joke

Wikipedia stands alone on the list of most-visited websites as one which is governed by its users and contributors. The causes of this powerful exception are almost as unique: an origin in the open-source software movement, an obvious goal, a strong resultant sense of purpose, and strict standards of ethics and conduct.

Wikipedia is fundamentally an anarchy; its first rule is ignore all rules: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." Over time, democratic and meritocratic elements have been added to its governance as they have been found necessary. Over all of this stretches a constitutional monarch: the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation (called WMF by the community) is a nonprofit organization governed by a Board of Trustees, which consists of:

• Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia,
• Two members elected by the affiliates of Wikimedia,
• Three members elected by the community of users of Wikimedia projects,
• Four members appointed by these six members.

The principal responsibility of the WMF is to host and protect the Wikimedia projects, which are:

• The English Wikipedia (whose government will be the primary focus of this study),
• Versions of Wikipedia in other languages (of which there are over two hundred),
• The sister projects of Wikipedia, such as Wiktionary (a dictionary), Wikibooks (a collection of textbooks), and Wikisource (a collection of primary sources), all of which are freely editable and available in many languages, like Wikipedia.

The Wikimedia movement includes all the work of the WMF. Beyond the Wikimedia projects, the WMF also:

• Establishes and recognizes geographically-based affiliates, known as chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups, to promote use of and contribution to Wikimedia on a local level.
• Develops and maintains the MediaWiki software (which this wiki runs on).

The WMF reserves the right to take "office actions" to delete articles, block users, and check user IPs. The expansion of this power has been fraught with controversy. For example, in 2014, the WMF implemented a feature called "Superprotect" which would allow certain pages to be edited only by WMF staff. After a community outcry this feature was permanently removed in 2015. Currently, reforms to further delineate the extent of this power are in progress.

The WMF is treated by the editors of Wikipedia as a necessary evil that guarantees the basis for their project's existence but is sometimes overly distracted from the main mission of Wikipedia: building a verifiable and complete encyclopedia.

Principles of Wikipedia

The five pillars of Wikipedia are:

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
2. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view.
3. Wikipedia is free content that can be used by anyone, even commercially.
4. The editors of Wikipedia should behave civilly towards each other.
5. Wikipedia has no firm rules.

The 5th pillar is the first principle of Wikipedia, so far as governance is concerned; the others will be touched on as necessary.

Editors are careful to keep their discussion and debate "under the hood" and out of the view of "mainspace", the namespace where all the articles and outward-facing content are. Hence, most readers of Wikipedia are not aware that controversies roil just below the surface of what they are reading.

Anarchy

Wikipedia is, first and foremost, an anarchy.

Wikipedia does not have firm rules; it has policies and guidelines which are enacted, changed, and interpreted by consensus. Consensus requires less than unanimity but more than a simple majority vote; it requires that all legitimate concerns weighing on the question be appropriately considered. (Even so, participants in major discussions will comment in "support", "oppose", or "neutral" sections, and number their statements within it, but they will still take care to call their statements "!votes", pronounced "not-votes"; their comments in favor or against are not votes, and "Support" or "Oppose" accompanied by no reasoning or just "per [for the same reasons as] <another user>" is frowned upon.) As such, it is notoriously difficult to enact or change a major policy or guideline.

The routine day-to-day work is also carried on by consensus, but these are strictly local and specific consensuses that cannot in any sense override the general and global consensus that formed the policies and guidelines. Content disputes (what variant of English to use, what title an article should have, what language should be used in the text, and the like) are decided by consensus on the "talk page" of the article.