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Secret Mailing List Rocks Wikipedia
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CorbinSimpson/TINC
Amazing how it still holds today, eh?
~ C.
I've encountered asshat's like this before, they never learn and never go away until you hit THEM with the ban hammer
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
To have hierarchy breaks the Wiki model, as it breeds suspicion. Even in groups with the best of intentions eventually the suspicion will be warranted if one has power over another. Unlike the real world, transgressions in wikis can be undone. In such a case it is better to rely on the sensible majority policing a malicious minority on an equal footing by weight of numbers rather giving special powers that can be abused.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy ...
"Bureaucracy happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."
It has always been like this, will always be like this
--- censored
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 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.
You misunderstand - I saw adminship as a responsibility, not a privilege. I was on Wikipedia to write articles, not engage in petty Wikipolitics. I don't have the time, nor the inclination to try to reform Wikipedia. Firstly, it's not really possible. Secondly, unless you have tried dealing with the numerous trolls, nasty editors or those who are trying to convert Wikipedia into Wikicruft then you can't possibly know how hard it is to be an admin who tries to stick to core principles.
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.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's not "secret" at all. Durova is infamous on wikipedia- everyone hates her and anyone that openly opposes her is getting landslide votes in the ongoing arbcom elections. Everyone knows what happened with !! and the "secret" mailing list is no secret- the arbitration committee does meet in private and they're allowed to have communication independent of the rest of wikipedia. Not only that, but this mailing list specifically is known to me and I'm not even a sysop, just some guy who's been hanging around freenode #wikipedia lately. If people would log onto IRC for 5 seconds, this wouldn't be such big news.
More specifically Andrew Orlowski (Register editor) hates wikipedia. Actually he hates anything that becomes popular on the internet but that is besides the point. This article is not by the troll king himself so might be a good read.
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.
The way you said it was funny but what you said is true. This is extremely childish behavior, and is VERY commonplace in most online communities. The only difference is that in this case, there was a written record of it and it was discovered by the community, and the community, as a collective, actually cared. I was once the victim of an almost identical situation, this is nothing uncommon. I know quite a few people who've suffered a similar treatment. Online communities are so rife with corruption, it almost makes meatspace look good. Perhaps what's worse is that the admins don't really have anything to gain from such behavior. They must get a feeling of power from it that they enjoy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.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.
Dude, where's my packet?
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).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.