[iDC] The wisdom of the few?

Thu Feb 28 05:24:00 UTC 2008

I find the article in Slate superficial as well, because it only focuses on a very specific aspect, i.e. the number of participants.

For a more serious analysis of what is wrong with the Wikipedia governance process, see the summary from Wikipedia Review, reworked at the P2P Foundation blog, at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-something-fundamentally-wrong-with-wikipedia-governance-processes/2008/01/07

Please check Wikipedia in the blog's search box for the updating of this debate. Below are many links to documentary sources, supporting the WR's conclusions.

Text:

	     The Wikipedia is often hailed as a prime
example of peer production and peer governance, an example of how a
community can self-govern very complex processes. Including by me.

But it is also increasingly showing the dark side and pitfalls of purely informal approaches, especially when they scale.

Wikipedia is particularly vulnerable because it’s work is not done
in teams, but by individuals with rather weak links. At the same time
it is also a very complex project, with consolidating social norms and
rules, and with an elite that knows them, vs. many occasional page
writers who are ignorant of them. When that system then instaures a
scarcity rule, articles have to be ‘notable’ or they can be deleted. It
creates a serious imbalance.
While the Wikipedia remains a remarkable achievement, and escapesany easy characterization of its qualities because of its sheervastness, there must indeed be hundreds of thousands of volunteersdoing good work on articles, it has also created a power structure, butit is largely ‘invisible’, opaque, and therefore particularlyvulnerable to the well-known tyranny of structurelessness.

Consider the orginal thoughts of Jo Freeman:

“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such
thing as a ’structureless’ group. Any group of people of whatever
nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will
inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be
flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute
tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will
be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities and intentions of
the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals with
different talents, predispositions and backgrounds makes this
inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis
whatsoever could we approximate ’structurelessness’ and that is not the
nature of a human group.”

Consider also this warning:

“Every group of people with an unusual goal - good, bad, or
silly - will trend toward the cult attractor unless they make a
constant effort to resist it. You can keep your house cooler than the
outdoors, but you have to run the air conditioner constantly, and as
soon as you turn off the electricity - give up the fight against
entropy - things will go back to “normal”.

In the same sense that every thermal differential wants to
equalize itself, and every computer program wants to become a
collection of ad-hoc patches, every Cause wants to be a cult. It’s a
high-entropy state into which the system trends, an attractor in human
psychology.
Cultishness is quantitative, not qualitative.  The question is not “Cultish, yes or no?” but “How much cultishness and where?”

The Wikicult website asserts that this stage has already been reached:

“With the systems, policies, procedures, committees, councils,
processes and appointed authorities that run Wikipedia, a lot of
intrinsic power goes around. While most serious contributors devotedly
continue to contribute to the implied idealism, there are those with
the communication and political skill to place themselves in the right
place at the right time and establish even more apparent power. Out of
these, a cabal inevitably forms; the rest, as they say, is history.”

Specialized sites have sprung up, such as the Wikipedia Review, monitoring power abuse in general, or in particular cases

The Wikipedia Review offers an interesting summaryof the various criticisms that have been leveled agains the Wikipedia,which I’m reproducing here below, but I’m adding links that documentthese processes as well. Spend some time on reading the allegations, their documentation, and make up your own mind.

My conclusion though is that major reforms will be needed to insure the Wikipedia governance is democratic and remains so.

1.	Wikipedia disrespects and disregards scholars, experts, scientists, and others with special knowledge.

“Wikipedia specifically disregards authors with special
knowledge, expertise, or credentials. There is no way for a real
scholar to distinguish himself or herself from a random anonymous
editor merely claiming scholarly credentials, and thus no claim of
credentials is typically believed. Even when credentials are accepted,
Wikipedia affords no special regard for expert editors contributing in
their fields. This has driven most expert editors away from editing
Wikipedia in their fields. Similarly, Wikipedia implements no controls
that distinguish mature and educated editors from immature and
uneducated ones.”

Critique of Wikipedia’s open source ideology, as opposed to free software principles

2. Wikipedia’s culture of anonymous editing and administration results in a lack of responsible authorship and management.

“Wikipedia editors may contribute as IP addresses, or as an
ever-changing set of pseudonyms. There is thus no way of determining
conflicts of interest, canvassing, or other misbehaviour in article
editing. Wikipedia’s adminsitrators are similarly anonymous, shielding
them from scrutiny for their actions. They additionally can hide the
history of their editing (or that of others).”

3. Wikipedia’s administrators have become an entrenched and
over-powerful elite, unresponsive and harmful to authors and
contributors.

“Without meaningful checks and balances on administrators,
administrative abuse is the norm, rather than the exception, with
blocks and bans being enforced by fiat and whim, rather than in
implementation of policy. Many well-meaning editors have been banned
simply on suspicion of being previously banned users, without any
transgression, while others have been banned for disagreeing with a
powerful admin’s editorial point of view. There is no clear-cut code of
ethics for administrators, no truly independent process leading to
blocks and bans, no process for appeal that is not corrupted by the
imbalance of power between admin and blocked editor, and no process by
which administrators are reviewed regularly for misbehaviour.”

Overview of developments

The blog Nonbovine ruminations critically monitors Wikipedia governance 
The Wikipedia has stopped growing because of the deletionists: Andrew Lih  ;  Slate 
Wikipedia’s abusive bio-deletion process: case by Tony Judge

4. Wikipedia’s numerous policies and procedures are not
enforced equally on the community — popular or powerful editors are
often exempted.

“Administrators, in particular, and former administrators, are
frequently allowed to trangress (or change!) Wikipedia’s numerous
“policies”, such as those prohibiting personal attacks, prohibiting the
release of personal information about editors, and those prohibiting
collusion in editing.”

The undemocratic practices of its investigative committee 
A personal experience
The badsites list of censored sites belonging to Wikipedia’s enemies  
Lack of transparency and accountability  
The Judd Bagley case

InformationLiberation on Wikipedia’s totalitarian universe

5. Wikipedia’s quasi-judicial body, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is at best incompetent and at worst corrupt.

“ArbCom holds secret proceedings, refuses to be bound by
precedent, operates on non-existant or unwritten rules, and does not
allow equal access to all editors. It will reject cases that threaten
to undermine the Wikipedia status quo or that would expose powerful
administrators to sanction, and will move slowly or not at all (in
public) on cases it is discussing in private.”

Monitoring of ArbCom’s activities
Summary of criticisms
The case of the secret mailing list for top insiders

6. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization legally
responsible for Wikipedia, is opaque, is poorly managed, and is
insufficiently independent from Wikipedia’s remaining founder and his
business interests.

“The WMF lacks a mechanism to address the concerns of outsiders,
resulting in an insular and socially irresponsible internal culture.
Because of inadequate oversight and supervision, Wikimedia has hired
incompetent and (in at least one case) criminal employees. Jimmy Wales’
for-profit business Wikia benefits in numerous ways from its
association with the non-profit Wikipedia.”

The Foundation’s budget
Wikimedia chairwoman rejects demand for transparency
Review of the conflict of interest issue

----- Original Message ----
From: "Howe, Jeff" <Jeff_Howe at wired.com>
To: Steve Cisler <sacisler at yahoo.com>; idc at mailman.thing.net
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 6:13:46 AM
Subject: Re: [iDC] The wisdom of the few?

Re: [iDC] The wisdom of the few?Attention to anyone who follows this link. Slate writer totally (and inexplicably) misrepresents the PARC study that was supposedly providing the evidence for his piece. My advice? Skip the article and go straight to the study (attached), that reveals that the tide is starting to shift again toward increasing participation on the part of the crowd, as opposed to the few. 

My email to Slate writer, fwiw:

Chris, 

Thanks for the article. I hadn’t read the study, and found it valuable. I believe you’ve misrepresented the conclusions Chi, et. al reached though comments, my apologies. The prevalence of the 80/20 rule in social media is an old story—got heaps of ink when Wales first revealed that 2.5 percent of Wiki contribs were doing the heavy lifting back in 04, but this study actually reveals something genuinely newsworthy (and diametrically opposed to the angle on your piece):

The results suggest that although Wikipedia was driven by the 
influence of “elite” users early on, more recently there has 
been a dramatic shift in workload to the “common” user.

Now that’s worth writing about. Sort of a closing of the arc. These sites were championed as paragons of the Web’s democratic nature, then the truth came out that a tiny percentage of “elites” were responsible for most of the content, and now indications are showing that with continued usage, the crowd is indeed taking over some of that burden. 

I’d respectfully suggest you owe the good folks at PARC a correction, but that’s between you and your ed.   

All Best, 

Jeff Howe 

On 2/27/08 3:56 PM, "Steve Cisler" <sacisler at yahoo.com> wrote:

   Here's another critical view of a some so-called Web2.0 services focusing on the dominance of the hyper-connected few:

  The Wisdom of the Chaperones Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy.
  By Chris Wilson
  Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2008, at 6:11 PM ET

  http://www.slate.com/id/2184487/
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