Netizenship/Wikipedia
It's a good idea - but it only works in practice, not in theory.--Common community joke
Have you ever looked something up or checked something on Wikipedia (please don't call it "wiki")? Of course you have. But did you know that just under what you are reading lies a world of discussion about what Wikipedia should say, and that this process is largely driven by the editors and contributors of Wikipedia themselves? That's what makes it unique and worthy of studying.
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[1].
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[2]. Currently, reforms to further delineate the extent of this power are in progress[3].
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[4]:
- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
- Wikipedia has a neutral point of view.
- Wikipedia is free content that can be used by anyone, even commercially.
- The editors of Wikipedia should behave civilly towards each other.
- 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 about what they read roil just beneath the surface of it. Every article has a "talk page" where discussion about the article (but, importantly, not about the subject of the article) takes place, and there is also a "Wikipedia" namespace for internal discussions and policies.
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[5]. (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 (relating to the 2nd pillar) are decided by consensus on the talk page of the article. Citations to policies and guidelines, which the participants are powerless to change, are the order of the day in such talks.
Democracy
Wikipedia contains democratic elements.
It holds elections for an Arbitration Committee. The Arbitration Committee consists of 15 members, half of whom are elected every other year (though before 2010, a third of them were elected every third year). The Arbitration Committee has no power over content disputes. Rather, its powers extend to banning problematic users from editing the site as a whole, from specified topics, or from interacting with users they have problems with.
