Secret Mailing List Rocks Wikipedia 531
privatemusings writes "Wikipedians are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over throughout the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing around. The Register has this fantastic writeup — read it here first." The article says that some Wikipedians believe Jimbo Wales has lost face by supporting the in-crowd of administrators and rebuking the whistle blower who leaked the existence of the secret mailing list.
I wrote this essay over a year ago... (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazing how it still holds today, eh?
wiki == worthless (Score:3, Interesting)
I've encountered asshat's like this before, they never learn and never go away until you hit THEM with the ban hammer
Admins have to go (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia Meme Waning (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=wikipedia_meme [realmeme.com]
Wikipedia probably entered its growth inflection point in early 2006.
The current turmoil is due to a state change towards a declining rate of growth.
Iron law of oligarchy (Score:5, Interesting)
"Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."
It has always been like this, will always be like this
Stanford Encyclopedia Experiment (Score:1, Interesting)
Contribution and alternatives to payment (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with most of what you say, but I believe you are mistaken about payment, and I think FOSS provides a good illustration of why.
Once necessities have been taken care of, social status is probably the greatest motivation for people to make money. Paying contributors doesn't really change that. You are right that not all people crave power or exclusivity. But power is not the only social reward - there are other alternatives besides money. (Exclusivity is itself not a reword, only a way to achieve status.) Reputation does not have to be exclusive. Indeed it requires inclusion - you can't have a reputation all by your lonesome. And it doesn't have to involve negative power dynamics.
Many well-regarded FOSS developers achieved their reputations without power tripping. In this they are constrained, as you suggest, by the choices of participants (the competition you cite is a particular way of achieving this) - in the case of FOSS, forking or the threat of forking constrains projects from degenerating too much. Many projects aren't exclusive either: the whole point of the exercise is to draw in participants. Linus's reputation is largely built on the number of participants in Linux, and on his ability to manage based on consent (which I believe contributes to his reputation).
There are two kinds of gift-giving [wikipedia.org] in cultures in which it is important. In both cases, people try to incur debts by giving gifts. One kind of giving is agonistic (competitive): the objective is to give gifts to people unable to return them, thereby demonstrating dominance over them. The second kind of giving also incurs debts, but it involves exchange. Even though a return gift is given, the slate is not wiped clean - both parties remain somewhat in debt. Social bonds are formed, giving rise to community. I believe most successful FOSS involves the second kind of giving.
Gah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, the bottom line is: nowadays on Wikipedia you are either an admin or an editor. I tried to be both, and it sucked up all my time. It shouldn't be like that, but it is. There are systemic issues on Wikipedia, I don't know how they should be fixed, nor do I much care anymore. Unless something is done, we're going to see a lot more of this silliness. Which is sad, very sad.
Re:If I were still in the eighth grade... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Interesting)
On a side note have you noticed that Orlowski articles on El Reg never have commenting enabled. I'm sure the man himself would say it is to prevent the site being overwhelmed with flames by people who don't like him or his views. I think it is just because it would look bad for his spurious opinion pieces to be torn apart on the site for all to see.
Re:I wrote this essay over a year ago... (Score:1, Interesting)
In many ways, this is an ancient division. The liberal view that all opinions are equally valid is threatened by the authoritarian arrogance of certain truth. Its a shame that science is often the tool of the authoritarians. This should be a lesson learned from history, but alas. The search for truth via the scientific method was never the search for certain truth - it isn't about shutting out new theories - or silencing different views. This is why I cringe every time I hear the words "scientifically proven". The truth is powerful and begets arrogance.
Re:Why is this controversial? (Score:3, Interesting)
Both of these activities are things on Wikipedia should have been done in a much more public place, and technically have "official" pages on Wikipedia where they are supposed to happen where, in theory, everybody's opinion is taken into account.
This is also one of my concerns about the wikimedia IRC channels, where decisions like this are often made as well with the cliquish group that hangs out in that communication channel. But at least the IRC channels are public (for the most part...there are some exceptions). The reason this creates problems is that the contributors don't know what is said about them in these forums, and can't defend themselves.
While not a perfect example here, it is something akin to a bunch of police officers sitting around a water cooler in the station making judgments about citizens, making the arrest, and telling the citizen they just arrested that they have just been convicted in a "trial" they weren't even aware of even happening. Only the trial isn't even mentioned, just the sentence. In the case of Wikipedia, the user is banned, including an IP block (quite often). Or a policy decision is reached and the group "announces" the major policy shift as a done deal without seeking input from the community...under the guise that it still is a democratic decision even though the decision has been made.
It is for this precise reason that in normal society (unlike Wiki society) that there are public meeting laws that prohibit legislative bodies (like city councils and state legislatures) from gathering together in a non-public forum, especially if they can form a "quorum" that in theory could make a decision. This can get particularly tough in small town city councils, where a gathering of 3 city council members outside of the official meetings is technically illegal under such laws. The mainstream news media is especially justified to express outrage (or to show citizens in outrage) when these "closed meetings" make sweeping policy decisions.
Along the same lines, the hard formalism that is seen in a judicial proceeding is there for many reasons, not the least of which is to protect the innocent. While not perfect, it is intended to be a public forum where at least in theory every citizen has the opportunity to witness every decision as it is being made.
This is where the group of admins crossed the line on this mailing list. If they merely talked about the various issues among themselves, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the list. Again, going back to the police analogy, it would be like a bunch of officers talking about an ongoing trial that they were involved with. There is nothing wrong with that, only upon taking action and reaching decisions outside of the official forums. This isn't to say that cops/prosecutors/judges don't sometimes abuse the system they are involved with either, but there are checks on that sort of activity, and laws that can ultimately be invoked to stop such a rogue system when it gets out of hand.
Mod parent INSIGHTFUL (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The cycles of change (Score:3, Interesting)
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
A corollary to the theory if I may;
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience + Authority = Complete Dick.
You give people anonymity and power, and they will be guaranteed to abuse it in any way they see fit, secure from repercussions of any kind. Wikipedia needs meatspace administrators, not legions of sockpuppeters.
Re:"Secret"? (Score:3, Interesting)
What happened with !! (the user Durova blocked) was unfortunate because Durova was absolutely correct that the user in question was a returning user and there were in fact certain serious warning signs. However, there was a piece of data that Durova did not have access to that would have explained everything, a datum that was highly injurious to !!'s privacy. That's why after the block was overturned, Durova and other admins tried to get people to stop discussing the matter on Wikipedia- the only possible explanations to users would have hurt !!. Frankly, the attempt by admins and Durova to get people to stop backfired and created only more drama. As a result, !! has left the project. The fact that a semi-secret list was used is more or less incidental to what occurred.
This is going to happen a LOT with "internet 2.0" (Score:3, Interesting)
Sites like this aren't democracies. They're businesses, controlled by one or a few people, who take advantage of their users generating content for free to make money for their business. All this "democracy" crap is just a bunch of "Web 2.0" hype.
Already Wikipedia admins suppress mention of this (Score:5, Interesting)
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/ [wikipediareview.com]
* http://www.wikitruth.info/ [wikitruth.info]
"On-Wiki" they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.
Re:Yeah, that's about what I thought (Score:5, Interesting)
No, seriously, I want to know. Preventing "vanity pages" and "ads" is one of the major justifications for the periodic 'notability purges' which basically amount to book-burnings; untold hours of people's effort being put to the torch by Wikipedia admins who don't like something about the content. (And they really go out of their way to destroy the information, too; it's not just a logical delete, the database is apparently scrubbed, it's as if the articles in question never even existed except in the delete logs.) And of course it opens the door to all types of censorship via selective enforcement.
All to keep the precious namespace clear of "low quality" articles (as if there aren't enough low-quality articles already -- it's kind of par for the course when you have user-editable content).
Re:"Secret"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Writing a justification of why you tend to take down users based on your suspicions is not a good way to gain credibility. You admit you act with flimsy evidence, but then you say, "Oh but we're doing it for the good of the whole, and you'd agree with us if only you could be trusted to know what we know."
Frankly it's horseshit, and I'm not surprised people are raising hell about it. It shows you have authority without oversight, and that you believe most of the users can't be trusted with oversight. For a supposedly "democratic" project, that sounds an awful lot like autocracy or facism. If you control the information that people need to be able to form accurate opinions, you are controlling them. That's the end of the story. It doesn't matter why you do it.
Now governments do this all the time, and they tend to be able to get away with it because they hold information that can cost people their lives. Moreover the government is set up in such a way that it watches itself, and is still accountable to the people.
Who are you accountable to? No one but yourselves, and we see here how that works. You make decisions based on information that you don't share with the community. People post damaging false info on Wikipedia all the time...What's the problem with having some damaging true information available? At least it's true.
It's almost amusing to watch power corrupt. You pitch democracy, you pitch community. But you concentrate power, you act unilaterally, and you withhold needed information from the community. That is neither democracy or community.
Re:Yeah, that's about what I thought (Score:4, Interesting)
But, what you're missing is that if his vanity page was more true than the content that it was replaced with or that challenges it on wikipedia now, then we *ALL* lost something of value. The loss is not confined to the person who pushed to have the material published. When people play such an active role in shaping the views of reality for other people, human psychology can play starring roles in the theories that we develop. I think that's the point of why all of this matters.
If you are so fortunate that everything you believe corresponds with what you currently read in wikipedia, then you can also count on eventually being wrong about a good number of things you believe as time goes on -- if the history of science is to have any bearing on how we currently judge things to be "mainstream" and "fringe". In this way, wikipedia miserably fails on controversial scientific issues because there are many things in science that are simply controversial. But wikipedia has no good process for presenting an intelligent discussion of divergent views (or at least, no mechanism for preventing censorship of the lesser popular view). There is a mismatch between wikpedia's model and the never-ending scientific process of moving ideas between the "fringe" and "mainstream" sects.
It used to be that the natural sciences thrived on disagreement and debate. I think that wikipedia indicates a cultural shift towards a communal desire to generate consensus, but I also believe that there are many scientific issues which we should not prematurely develop consensus on before more data is acquired, and that wikipedia is abandoning a rare opportunity to change the world into one that is not so black and white. In my own humble opinion, the end result is that many of our own most inquisitive children will one day observe the apparent existence of so much certainty within the sciences as reason to not go into science. Wikipedia acts to redirect peoples' curiosities about various controversial subjects. Rather than the focus being on the arguments, with full appreciation of the ongoing debate, they have instead opted to favor those ideas that are most popular. They invite people to just accept the most popular published "facts" rather than inviting people to understand the intricate details of the various debates (so that they can decide for themselves). It is truly an encyclopedia, but in an Internet era when something much more is needed to counter the perception in science that everything has been figured out.
It is a squandered opportunity that some other startup company will have to spend a large amount of effort and funds correcting before the people who run wikipedia will wake up.