[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Lobby takeover of wikimedia projects, particularly English wikipedia

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:08 AM 5/7/2008, Relata Refero wrote:
>On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 8:03 AM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
> > We're equally at risk from anyone who has a clue how to create
> > well-separated sockpuppet brigades.  And we have many of those about.

>Not equally at risk in terms of subversion of articles, I'm afraid.
>Individuals tend to have more modest aims.

RR is correct. We have sock farms, and possibly some 
deeply-entrenched sock farms; with sufficient precaution, they may be 
very difficult to detect, and, if detected, to prove sufficiently for 
present systems to respond to them.

However, there is no way that an individual can match what a group of 
individuals, coordinated, could do. Even a very small group, with 
sufficient motivation and intelligence, could basically take over 
Wikipedia, unless there are matching organizational structures in 
place to prevent it. Larger groups might be able to do it with less 
organization, and some think that this has already happened: all it 
takes is for a substantial group of editors to share some agenda and 
be willing to steadily promote it, and that agenda will quite likely prevail.

Essentially, open direct participatory democracies like Wikipedia (it 
*is* a rough democracy) have always been vulnerable to takeover by 
groups with a strong agenda; normal people don't want to stay up all 
night at tedious meetings, and normal people don't want to argue 
forever on Wikipedia pages. I've been doing some study of editing 
patterns, and there are some editors who are definitely not normal. 
Editing 18 hours a day for months and years isn't normal. Is this one 
person? Perhaps. Probably. But Wikipedia considers these editors to 
be the mainstay of the project, and they become administrators -- and 
more -- handily, as long as they stay away, at first, from certain 
kinds of offense of others.

Please don't misunderstand me. This is not a criticism of those 
heavily-involved editors. But it must be pointed out that heavy 
involvement can be a sign, sometimes, of some personal agenda. As I 
mentioned, small direct democracies, such as labor unions at certain 
periods in history, were vulnerable to takeover by radicals. The 
rank-and-file had families plus jobs. Some of the radicals only had 
the job so they could participate in the politics. That was their 
real goal. And they'd stay up all night if that is what it took to 
come to a point when enough others had gone home so that they were in 
the majority.

There is an answer to this problem. But it looks to me like 
practically nobody is willing to consider it. It does not involve any 
destruction or change of core Wikipedia values; indeed, it would 
simply realize them more perfectly. Instead, what I see is a 
substantial number of influential editors who seem quite ready to 
move to a different model, an elected hierarchy. That's been done 
before, just about everywhere. Look around you. You can see the 
result. Does it work?

(Yes. To a degree. But it also creates oligarchies and relative inflexibility.)