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Wikipedia Is Basically a Corporate Bureaucracy, Says Study (gizmodo.com)
Jennifer Ouellette, reporting for Gizmodo: Wikipedia is a voluntary organization dedicated to the noble goal of decentralized knowledge creation. But as the community has evolved over time, it has wandered further and further from its early egalitarian ideals, according to a new paper published in the journal Future Internet. In fact, such systems usually end up looking a lot like 20th-century bureaucracies. [...] This may seem surprising, since there is no policing authority on Wikipedia -- no established top-down means of control. The community is self-governing, relying primarily on social pressure to enforce the established core norms, according to co-author Simon DeDeo, a complexity scientist at Indiana University. [...] "You start with a decentralized democratic system, but over time you get the emergence of a leadership class with privileged access to information and social networks," DeDeo explained. "Their interests begin to diverge from the rest of the group. They no longer have the same needs and goals. So not only do they come to gain the most power within the system, but they may use it in ways that conflict with the needs of everybody else.""The Iron Law of Oligarchy, demonstrated by Wikipedia," wrote Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at Caltech. "Rebel all you want, ultimately you become The Establishment."
For all the complaints against bureaucracies, they are often the only way a large organization can run. As organizations grow and mature, they often evolve into bureaucracies. Bureaucracies are often a very efficient way of performing work. The main problem with them is they tend to become static, and inhibit future change. Parts of bureaucracies work to keep themselves in business, and resist change that would eliminate them, even if they become obsolete.
Wikipedia is playing King of the Hill.
The person that spends the most time making edits is the Editor. And there are a lot of self-important busy-bodies that will revert casual edits because they can. Some will attempt to justify it with official-sounding reasons for reversing, others will simply revert without much comment.
This is why I don't contribute to Wikipedia anymore, and why I do not browse it as much as I used to. The idea was interesting, but due to the way it was set up, the trolls run the place.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.