Posted by Ira Matetsky, guest-blogging:
Wikipedia: Who Runs the Place?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_05_10-2009_05_16.shtml#1242444024
As Wikipedia, the collaboratively edited online encyclopedia, becomes
more prominent, people often wonder who operates and administers the
site. I'm also asked sometimes how I became involved as an
administrator.
A majority of the people who contribute occasionally to Wikipedia may
have little or no interaction with the administrative side of things
at all. A new user doesn't need anyone's permission to start editing
or to register an account. One can make dozens or hundreds of edits
and never encounter an administrator acting as such or come into
contact with the site's rules and guidelines.
My experience as "newbie" Wikipedian was a largely, and perhaps
unusually, positive one, and the lens of my own early experiences
probably still flavors how I look at the site. As soon as I registered
my account, an experienced editor left a helpful "welcome" message on
my talkpage, with links to relevant pages of policies and helpful
hints. (Each user has a talkpage, which is a special page for messages
intended for that user.) The first time I made a bunch of edits to an
article, someone posted to my talkpage and thanked me for my
contributions. When I had questions about how to format an article, I
posted to the Help Desk and received a polite and useful response
almost instantly. When I made rookie mistakes, they were quietly
corrected and I was gently advised what had gone wrong. I was invited
to join a project of editors with interests similar to mine. When I
started to learn about policies, I read guidelines such as "be civil
to your fellow editors," "when there is a disagreement, discuss it and
seek consensus," and "don't bite the newcomers."
So my first impression was that Wikipedians included a collaborative
group of exceptionally friendly people working together to write an
encyclopedia while having some fun in the process. (Okay, I soon
learned that not every page of Wikipedia was like that, as I was clued
in pretty early to some areas where there was some nasty feuding going
on. In fact, within a couple of months, I was trying unsuccessfully to
mediate one of the loudest feuds on the site. But a first impression
is a first impression.)
Of course, not everyone has the same generally favorable introduction
to contributing that I did. If an editor's first contribution is an
article about an marginally notable person or a garage band or his
junior high school, his first memory of Wikipedia may be of the
article being summarily deleted. If a user starts off writing in a
controversial area, her first experience may be one of "edit-warring"
as disputing users change the article back-and-forth to their
preferred versions. If an editor starts off by uploading images, she
will very likely receive a warning for inadvertently violating one or
another of the complex rules implemented to prevent copyright
violations. And sometimes one just runs into another editor who either
doesn't know anything about the subject-matter but acts as if he does,
or who just feels like being a jerk.
(I was once asked whether I'd ever been a party to a real edit-war.
The biggest one I recall was an ongoing dispute about whether
Presidential and Congressional terms prior to the Twentieth Amendment
ended at midnight on March 3rd or at noon on March 4th. This issue
comes up all the time in biographies and lists. The answer, of course,
is March 4th, but because there are some otherwise authoritative
sources such as older editions of the "Congressional Biographical
Directory" that say March 3rd, this remains a matter of occasional
contention.)
So sooner or later a truly experienced editor will run into the
administrative apparatus underlying the site. On the English
Wikipedia, any registered editor is eligible to run for the status of
administrator. In practice a few months' editing experience and a few
thousand edits are required for a successful candidacy. Nominations
can be made by oneself or by another user and are posted to a page
called "Requests for adminship" ("RfA"), where any interested user can
post a "support" or "oppose" comment (one must carefully avoid calling
it a "vote") based on whatever criteria (within reason) they
individually choose to apply.
After seven days, the results are reviewed by a senior administrator
archly designated as a "bureaucrat," who determines whether there is a
"consensus" to promote the candidate. Hundreds of megabytes of text on
[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship]] have been spent in seeking
out the perfect metaphysical definition of consensus, but in practice,
support from 75% of the "!voters" typically guarantees promotion.
There are no requirements for adminship beyond having a sufficiently
strong record of participation to pass RfA. There is no requirement
that the candidate disclose his or her real name or background, and
many don't. (I've never disclosed my real name on-wiki, although at
this point I will soon go ahead and do so.) For example, there is no
minimum age requirement. (Certain specialized functionaries do now
have to be over 18 and provide proof of their identity to the
Wikimedia Foundation Office, though they don't have to disclose it
publicly.) There have been administrators as young as 12 or 13 years
old; there are no good demographic numbers that I'm aware of, but I
would estimate that the median age would be no higher than mid-20s,
and I'm painfully aware that at age 46 I am almost surely in the
oldest decile of admins. (It feels like just yesterday that I was the
youngest person ever elected to the School Board in my town, and now
I'm a senior wiki-citizen.)
Critics of Wikipedia often suggest that there is a serious problem
with the fact that so many of the administrators, with important
powers such as blocking and deletion, are relatively youthful. These
are often the same people who suggest that it is absurd for older
people with more life experience to spend a portion of their hobby
time serving as Wikipedia administrators. Sometimes the same critics
make both of these comments, but they are, in effect if not in intent,
mutually exclusive.
Administrators are given certain special powers not open to other
users, such as the ability to block someone who has violated Wikipedia
policies from editing; to delete a page; to protect a page from
editing (either by new users or by any non-admin); close certain
discussions and decide their outcomes; to view the content of most
material that has been deleted. There are about 1600 administrators on
the English Wikipedia, of whom a few hundred are active at any one
time. There are rules governing how admins are to use their tools, and
policies urging them to be civil and helpful in their interactions
with other users. In my experience, most administrators do their best
to live up to these guidelines; of course, the occasional exception
affects the reputation of all.
There is also a system of methods for dispute resolution, including
various options for mediation and noticeboards for discussing
different types of concerns that may arise. At the end of the dispute
resolution process is a body known as the Arbitration Committee, which
consists of a group of editors (currently 16) chosen in annual
elections. (Formally, the committee is appointed by Jimmy Wales, who
holds a special role in Wikipedia governance derived from his role in
founding the site, but in the past few elections he has followed the
election returns.) The ArbCom addresses user conduct disputes, and
typically is not empowered to decide issues such as "which version of
this article is better?" or "what should our policy on such-and-such
be?" At the moment there is no central mechanism for handing down
binding resolution on content disputes or policy decisions, and there
is disagreement about whether it would be desirable for there to be
one.
I've been following the workings of the ArbCom since early in my
wiki-career: first as an occasional critic, later as a clerk for the
committee, and since January 2008 as one of the arbitrators. My work
as an administrator and an arbitrator has completely changed my
Wikipedia experience: Instead of contributing substance to a growing
body of free knowledge in an atmosphere of respect and harmony, I must
review the history of Wikipedia's most contentious, protracted,
bitter, and unhappy disputes and help decide what to do about them.
The cases that come to arbitration are those that cannot be resolved
any other way. Most often, they concern editing disputes in exactly
the areas one might expect to be the most contentious of all; cases we
have accepted this year have included disputes about editing of [[Ayn
Rand]] and related articles, of [[Scientology]] and related articles,
of [[Ireland]] (is "Ireland" primarily the name of an island or a
country), of [[Macedonia]] (or is it [[The Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia]]?), and so on. We have also accepted cases involving
individual administrators or editors who have engaged in allegedly
problematic behavior.
After reviewing each case, the committee issues a decision comprising
principles, findings of fact, and remedies. The remedies we can hand
down range from noting instances of bad behavior and admonishing
parties to do better, restricting a user's editing (such as by banning
her from editing articles about a particular topic), imposing various
types of probations or mentorships, revoking an administrator's
adminship ("desysopping"), or in the most extreme cases, banning an
editor from Wikipedia altogether.
We try to keep the process from becoming too legalistic, although
occasional legal terms or wordings sneak into the process or the
decisions, for which I am occasionally to blame. (The most useful
thing I've tried to bring with me in terms of a legal concept is an
instinct to always make sure that the parties have had a fair
opportunity to present their views and evidence before we proceed to a
decision.) My real-life work as a lawyer has not had much to do with
how I think as an arbitrator: There are very few parallels between the
work of a committee on a website and anything that happens in the real
world, and in decisions, I've emphasized that nothing we decide is
meant to have any consequences in the offline world. Still, sometime,
if I can figure out a way to do it without sounding absurdly
aggrandizing, I will write about what my time as a Wikipedia
arbitrator has taught me about the types of decisions that must be
made every day by a judge of a multi-member appellate court with a
discretionary jurisdiction.
Ultimate control over the English Wikipedia, along with all of the
sister projects and projects in other languages, resides with the
Wikimedia Foundation. The Foundation is the charitable foundation that
owns the equipment and the trademarks. The Foundation has a board of
directors (chosen by a combination of members), an Executive Director
and a small staff, and a General Counsel (currently Mike Godwin, of
Godwin's Law fame). It sets policy only at a very broad level, and
does not get involved in addressing particular disputes.
I'll have a little more to say about rules and policies tomorrow.
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