Meet the 36 People Who Run Wikipedia

blastboy writes By pretty much any logic, Wikipedia shouldn't work: A vast website, built on the labor of volunteers, with very few tangible rewards and a fairly weird hierarchy. From the article: "The stewards would prefer to go unnoticed. Only one has ever had any real fame—Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales served as a steward from 2006 to 2009. They operate above the fray, giving and taking user privileges and intervening in matters that lower-ranking editors can’t handle. You can summon them for emergencies in the Wikimedia Stewards IRC chat room by typing '!steward.' Their secrecy has a certain irony, given the very public product they manage, but perhaps it’s emblematic of Wikimedia as a whole. When your foundational value is that 'every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge,' hierarchies become a necessary evil."

Comments

I have a friend that is a Steward and wrote a book

[Saysys]

HI,

While focused on an academic audience of organizational scholars, I have a friend who was a Steward and has written an ethnographic book about Wikipedia:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/searc...

If you are more interested in accessible information he's also written an editorial regarding Wikipedia for Slate:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

What's wrong with hierarchy?

[Anonymous Coward]

We keep acting like it is a bad thing, but it does have value. Well-organized hierarchies and react quickly. I would fully expect Wikipedia to be run by a well-organized group. Otherwise it wouldn't be as consistent as it is. Frankly, it is a bit of a miracle just how high the quality is across the board.

Re:How do you even know these are the 36 people?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here, have a citation from the very source: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki...

What is this?

[Curunir_wolf]

It seems more and more stories on /. are just native advertising. Digging through all the stories to find something interesting is like digging through an email account with no spam filters.