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Meet the 36 People Who Run Wikipedia

Posted by samzenpus on from the who's-running-things dept.

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."

30 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. I have a friend that is a Steward and wrote a book by Saysys · · Score: 4, Informative

    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/...

  2. Stewards are usually like janitors* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least on the English Wikipedia. There are a few times when actually make decisions, but by and large they are just the "key-holders" and implement decisions made by the community or by higher-up functionaries.

    * Yes I know, it's the administrators who are usually considered the janitors on the Wiki.

    1. Re:Stewards are usually like janitors* by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In fact they're more or less prohibited from doing anything except janitorial work. For example they have the power to make someone into an administrator, but they are only supposed to do so in response to each Wikipedia's own community process deciding on it. Each wiki has its own process where you can request to become administrator, people can comment on the request, and there is some decision-making process. If the outcome is "yeah, make this person an administrator", then one of the stewards is supposed to make that person an admin. If they decided to just take some other person who hadn't been approved by the German Wikipedia, and turn them into an admin on the German Wikipedia, they'd quickly lose their own "steward" bit.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  3. How do you even know these are the 36 people?! by mandark1967 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Citation Needed or GTFO

    --
    Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
    1. Re:How do you even know these are the 36 people?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    2. Re:How do you even know these are the 36 people?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

  4. What's wrong with hierarchy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by almitydave · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A better system is one where each has ultimate control over their view into wikipedia. Censorship should be at the client, not the server. Each viewer can customize the view to their heart's desire, without infringing on anyone else's right to free speech. Technology provides us the tools to implement such customization of views (i.e. slashdot comment threshold settings, etc.).

      Great, just what an encyclopedia of facts needs: a way for readers to filter it to present the reality they want to see. Why don't they just subscribe to blogs if they only want to view things they agree with?

      Saying hierarchies are necessary is saying some people have to be controlled. Why, though?

      Because some people are tremendous assholes. See also, laws, prisons.

      --
      my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
      I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
    2. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by Lazere · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I disagree. In order to be accurate you need to "censor" speech. Wikipedia has positioned itself as a reliable source of information. Even with a moderation system similar to slashtot's, the user would have no way to verify what speech on Wikipedia is accurate and it would quickly become useless. It works on slashdot because we realize that the user comments are just that, comments and we don't take them for accurate information. That system breaks completely in an encyclopedia replacement where errors and misinformation needs to be kept to a minimum.

    3. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by suutar · · Score: 2

      I think it's less that "letting people warp what the encyclopedia looks like to them to fit their preconceptions" is a good idea, than that "letting people warp what's in the encyclopedia to fit their preconceptions" is a bad one.

    4. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by EuclideanSilence · · Score: 2

      Wikipedia has positioned itself as a reliable source of information.

      It was my understanding that wikipedia was attempting to position itself as a reliable source of references.

    5. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by angularbanjo · · Score: 2

      'slashtots'. Love it. News for babies, diapers that matter.

    6. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by NormalVisual · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, many people who bitch about Wikipedia and how it doesn't work complain that their edits were undone, often because they added information without a reliable source for verification.

      The issue I've run into is that sometimes there simply isn't a "reliable source" other than people that are intimately familiar with the topic at hand because the written information is under an NDA or otherwise inaccessible. In my particular case, it dealt with the monorail system at Disney World - I worked there for years, was a trainer on the system, and know a fair bit about the internals of the trains and control/signalling system, as does any other driver with any experience. However, Disney and Bombardier are pretty strict about controlling the availability of any official detailed printed/electronic documentation, so in the end I ended up just giving up and letting the incorrect information that was in the article and the half-assed "citations" stay there because the only authoritative citations were in documentation that was unavailable to the public, and I got to the point where I just didn't care anymore whether Jimmy presented bogus info while claiming it was accurate.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    7. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

      Oh, it gets better. I'm "not qualified" to edit a certain set of topics in software architecture because--get this--I'm a maintainer of the official documentation for one of the most popular/widespread implementations. And therefore POV. Or something.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    8. Re:What's wrong with hierarchy? by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

      The thing to do in that case is rather preversely set up your own website with the information on then cite that.

      I had thought of that then, and I'm sure plenty of people do just that. It just wasn't a big enough deal for me to go to the effort.

      Unfortunately the internet is FULL of nutters who think they know stuff but don't. Sadly the nuttiness makes them all the louder.

      Big time, and the guy that decided to go full-on edit war with me was one of those. It really reinforced my understanding that Wikipedia shouldn't be relied on as an authoritative source of information in itself, but rather a jumping-off point to evaluate the given references. I've often had spelling/grammatical corrections reverted by people that clearly failed English 101. [shrug]

      I'm not saying you're one of those. In fact I'm prefectly prepared to take your word for it that you're not. The problem is wikipedia is inundated with those people and it's really hard to tell the difference.

      I appreciate the vote of confidence, but like I said, it's just not worth my time to worry about it. I do think about it every time Jimmy comes begging for money though.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  5. Meet the 36 People Who Run Wikipedia (Poorly) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And because nobody pays attention to the stewards, they're not held accountable.

    1. Re:Meet the 36 People Who Run Wikipedia (Poorly) by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And because nobody pays attention to the stewards, they're not held accountable.

      To play devil's advocate: the fact that they're doing their jobs commendably well is possibly the reason nobody pays attention to them. So by that, they ARE held accountable. They just measure up pretty well under that accounting, so nobody complains about them (with the obvious notable exceptions).

      It's kind of like saying "and because nobody pays attention to the janitors at my workplace, they're not held accountable." You'd better bet that if things started going missing or the mess started to build up, people would pay attention pretty quickly.

    2. Re:Meet the 36 People Who Run Wikipedia (Poorly) by DumbSwede · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Held accountable for what? This total free resource I can use with no strings attached, all the while when these guys have to deal with and moderate with various personalities and entities constantly trying to pervert Wikipedia from its mission.

      To me Wikipedia is a marvel to behold, a shining bastion of how not-to-be Facebook. I’m constantly amazed at the vitriol they endure when one or two contentious pages gets messed up by some self-aggrandizing a**hole. Nobody seems to stop or look at the literally millions of technical pages which get used on an everyday basis to solve real world problems – but instead focus on whether Justin Beber, Ron Paul, the Koch Brothers, or Monsanto are given a fair shake in their writeups.

      --
      Letter To Iran
  6. Re:Which one? by Wootery · · Score: 2

    The two actually have very little to do with each other.

    They have in common all that matters for the point being made, which is that it's surprising that unpaid, unorganised contributors can make something worthwhile, even in the face of vandals/trolls, and on a limited budget.

    Wikipedia's imperfections are not relevant here.

  7. Wiki hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    >"...your foundational value is that 'every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge'"...

    Hah. If I could only count the number of factually correct pages that have disappeared over the years for failure to be "relevant" or "sufficiently important" or whatever metric they use, I'd be counting pretty damn high. Care about a regionally famous indie band from the mid 90's to the point that you'll carefully assemble what little information is out there about them? Too bad, gone in a blink, as if archive.org were complete and searchable for that stuff.

    I've just never understood why something true should be excluded there.

    1. Re:Wiki hype by ihtoit · · Score: 2

      4.5 million pages, 40GB data set (just text), hell my PHONE has space for that.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  8. So what does not work? by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    Time and again people surface to tell us just how unjust Wikipedia's editing is, how unfair their Stewards are, how biased and whatnot it is... While staying deliberately vague and nonsensical. Point to an article that is biased, unjust and wrong and let's see it for ourselves or STFU!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:So what does not work? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Point to an article that is biased, unjust and wrong and let's see it for ourselves or STFU!

      And even if a biased, unjust and wrong article were to exist, I could find out who the editors were and when revisions were made and watch the behind-the-scenes process in the Talk page.

      I don't really mind the possibility of bias, as long as it's out on the table for discussion and open to correction. I don't recall any other encyclopedia having a Talk page.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:So what does not work? by labnet · · Score: 2

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

      Have a look at the talk page.
      Regardless of what you think of the subject, the article is clearly biased. Read the thread under ''What about these studies then ?''

      --
      46137
    3. Re:So what does not work? by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wikipedia's "No original research" policy is second in asininity only to its "let's delete articles because we can" policy.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    4. Re:So what does not work? by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The thing I hate most is the "consensus" obsession. It leads to -- and I've seen this even though I rarely contribute -- people just making shit up about Wikipedia policies to support their positions and claiming it's "consensus". A lot of it comes down to who has groupthink on their side and, even more troublingly, who can bluff and bluster the best.

      Wikipedia's community is toxic. I'm amazed the results are as good as they are, and it saddens me that the site could probably be so much better if it were better managed.

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
    5. Re:So what does not work? by linuxrocks123 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In theory, yes, that might be a good thing. Still of dubious value in my opinion -- information is information; I don't care whether it's been officially published or is on arXiv as long as it's correct -- but maybe.

      In practice, this happens:
      Editor: "The dataflow machine concept [1] suffered from several fatal flaws [2][3], including an inability to efficiently broadcast parallel tokens [4]. MIT continued researching dataflow machines [5][6][7] long after most other researchers had stopped."
      Asshole (probably an MIT fanboy): "DELETING the last sentence because it's ORIGINAL RESEARCH!!111one."
      Editor: "WTF it's a widely known fact that this is true and you can look at the published research and see that the last publications on classical dataflow machines to verify it."
      Asshole: "But it's ORIGINAL RESEARCH(!!11ONE!) because YOU HAD TO LOOK IT UP IT WASN'T WRITTEN DOWN SOMEWHERE ELSE."
      Editor: "But that's idiotic. It's true; that's all that matters. And it's important to note this, because it could have implications for researchers studying potentially unhealthy research cultures--"
      Asshole: "Okay so now you HATE MIT too you're BIASED and should stop editing any articles about MIT!"
      Asshole Administrator: "Reverting page to last revision by Asshole. No original research, Editor. Take some time to cool off."

      Who's right here? As a society, it's good to know and document that MIT had gotten so inbred in the 90s that it couldn't see that dataflow machines were a fool's errand even after other researchers could see it. And it's completely verifiable that MIT did, in fact, continue researching dataflow machines years after everyone else had realized they were a dead end and stopped. The article shouldn't say MIT had an inbred culture without a source for that -- that's close to an unverifiable opinion. But, MIT DID have an inbred culture in the late 80s, early 90s, and it's good to preserve the evidence of that. And Wikipedia's as good a place to survey dataflow machine literature as anywhere else. We need more well-written literature surveys. My vote is for the Editor. He didn't say anything biased, just stated the facts as they were and could easily be verified by anyone willing to look. He contributed to the article. And Asshole, aided by Asshole Administrator and Wikipedia's asshole NOR policy, scored a political victory to whitewash a rather sorry chapter in MIT's history.

      This is a completely hypothetical example, btw. But stuff pretty much EXACTLY LIKE THAT happens on Wikipedia all the time. And it's a damn shame.

      ---linuxrocks123

      --
      vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
  9. Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 2

    From Wikipedia's Statement of Principles:

    Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers.

    Personally, I lost interest in contributing to it a few years ago when the sort of constructive, well intended stuff I had always contributed began to get reverted on a regular basis. I still contribute occasionally, but only things that are still unlikely to be reverted, that is, minor cleanups of articles that nobody (else) reads.

    1. Re:Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From Wikipedia's Statement of Principles:

      Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers

      .

      Personally, I lost interest in contributing to it a few years ago when the sort of constructive, well intended stuff I had always contributed began to get reverted on a regular basis. I still contribute occasionally, but only things that are still unlikely to be reverted, that is, minor cleanups of articles that nobody (else) reads.

      The problem with Wikipedia is one we've seen with Communism, repeated over again.

      Or as Animal Farm put it, "All animals are equal, just some are more equal than others".

      We've seen it happen with Wikipedia - the statement you quoted pretty much says "everyone is equal", and we've seen it deteriorate to "everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others".

  10. Re:They don't meet notability requirements by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

    pretty much.That's what shits me about wikipedia.

    When you navigate to a page and there's a header saying that the page is scheduled for deletion. Hello? I found the page useful and anyone else searching for information on the topic may also.

    It's particularly annoying when a wikipedia article references another page. "examples of X are A, B and C". You navigate to B and it may or may not be there if some wiki-editor was in a bad mood.