Wikipedia

(PD) Image: John R. Brews
Number of articles on English Wikipedia vs. year. (Data from Wikimedia)

(PD) Image: John R. Brews
Number of new accounts per month on WP over its lifetime. (Data from Wikimedia.)

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written in every major language by an anonymous user base on a voluntary basis. Its editorial decisions are self-described as governed by consensus, and as exemplifying the "democratization of knowledge". Although anyone can edit articles, and anyone with an account can contribute articles, the project is controlled by a many-layered oligarchy that serves to maintain order and the operation of the site.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia went "live" on January 15th of that year and grew exponentially in its first 4 to 5 years. It is the world's largest encyclopedia project. The English-language Wikipedia is the world's largest single wiki and now contains more than 3.4 million individual articles.

Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Among web sites with the highest traffic, Wikipedia is ranked fifth by Alexa and by Ranking.com, an increase from seventh that prevailed before June 2011. That ranks Wikipedia ahead of Twitter (number 8-9) and LinkedIn (number 13-14).

Wikipedia articles are widely republished by other web sites. For example, a Google search for the exact wording of the leading phrase in the article Speed of light turns up roughly twenty thousand to thirty thousand hits (it varies from time to time), including Facebook, YouTube, Ask.com, Answers.com and others. Some of these sites contain advertising, for example, Answers.com, which may raise some eyebrows over profiting from voluntary efforts of Wikipedia contributors.

According to Alexa, Wikipedia's main audience demographic is childless, male, graduate students age 24 or younger. A separate assessment is the UNU Merit-Wikimedia Survey that showed an average age of ~26 years with 1/4 less than 18. Overall, 1/4 were women and 3/4 men, and among those using WP about 9% classified themselves as "regular contributors".

History

An accidental spin-off of Nupedia, a now-defunct online encyclopedia written by experts, Wikipedia was started by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in January 2001 as a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia that anyone with access to one of its project websites can edit. Sanger left the project March 1, 2002 when funding ran dry, and later permanently distanced himself from it toward the end of 2002.

Changes made to Wikipedia articles undergo no formal peer review and are immediately viewable on the World Wide Web. Under this deliberately radical open model, Wikipedia's growth has been exponential. Within only a month, Wikipedia had 600 articles, and a year later in January 2002, 20,000. On November 20, 2004, the English Wikipedia alone reached 400,000 articles, and by March 1, 2006, that number had reached 1 million. By 2010 more than 3,000,000 articles had been created on the English Wikipedia alone.

Philosophy

Wikipedia's undergirding philosophy is that most of its contributors are well-meaning, and that unmoderated collaboration among them will gradually improve the encyclopedia such that it is both reliable and reputable.

Main features

Wikipedia refers to two of its pivotal features in its slogan, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Indeed, virtually any person on the Internet may create or edit a Wikipedia article, thanks to the use of wiki software. Contributors may edit Wikipedia anonymously or register user accounts. As of August, 2009, Wikipedia has more than 10 million registered users, though much of the content that users see is produced by a relatively small group of people: perhaps about 4,200 users, or 0.1%. These users have been responsible for about 44% of regularly-read content, with this domination increasing, according to one 2007 research estimate based on words read.

The project wrote its own wiki software called MediaWiki, the software package on which Wikipedia runs, which makes it a dynamic wiki, capable of producing its contents through the interactions of its users. It is written in PHP and released under the GPL, permitting anyone to copy it and to modify it freely.

MediaWiki keeps fastidious track of its participants' editing and much of its internal activities. All edits are tracked and the editing history for every Wikipedia page is available. As a result, when anonymous (or registered) users make inappropriate revisions to an encyclopedia article (i.e., Wikipedia "vandalism"), Wikipedia volunteers can readily restore the prior version. This transparency also enables visitors to examine both the history of substantive articles and the portion of deliberations of Wikipedia's policy and organizational decisions that are effectuated through wiki webpages. Some of the public record may be deleted permanently if it is deemed an embarrassment to some participants.

A more or less stable group of Wikipedia users judges certain articles to be important enough and well-written enough to be considered featured articles. On 24 April 2008, there were 2,024 "Featured Articles" out of 2,346,120 articles on the English Wikipedia. In addition, various groups of users collaborate within topical "projects" to rate the quality of articles and upgrade weaker articles.

Wikipedia may be said to be free insofar as its articles provide free and open access to all content, thereby creating public domain products. All contributions of text are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).

While anyone may contribute anonymously, anonymous contributors may be partially identified by the IP address from which they contributed.

Wikipedia articles include both knowledge typical of printed encyclopedias as well as relatively recondite subjects, such as information on small towns, minor sports figures and celebrities, and popular culture. For example, many of the Pokémon characters have individual articles.

Administration

This section describes the formalities of Wikipedia administration, as described in various documents on Wikipedia.

Overview

The contributors or editors of Wikipedia participate subject to a number of policies and guidelines governing behavior and content. These rules are supervised by various authorities: Jimmy Wales, nominally in a position of ultimate authority, although he has deferred in most instances to the leadership of Wikipedia, the ~34 present Bureaucrats or Crats, the ~728 active Administrators or Admins, and another group called the Arbitration Committee or ArbCom with 15-18 members or Arbs, depending upon the rules adopted each year. There were 15 active Arbitrators in 2011. The Wikimedia Foundation or its designated agents also have authority to impose bans against IP addresses for pages, topics, or the entire site.

Bureaucrats

Bureaucrats form a category introduced in 2004, and have only a few limited activities. Among these, they may remove Administrators and Bureaucrats if so instructed by the Arbitration Committee, and appoint Administrators and Bureaucrats following a selection procedure. Selection follows a discussion process, Bureaucrats decide what criteria constitute a "consensus" upon appointment, at the end of which a Bureaucrat reviews the situation to see whether there is a "consensus". Consensus must surpass a numerical threshold of 85%, but final judgment is one of Bureaucrat discretion. As a result, Bureaucrats have almost complete control over appointment of new Bureaucrats. The number of newly appointed Bureaucrats has steadily declined over the years, with only two successful candidacies in 2011. Bureaucrats serve indefinitely.

Administrators

The activities of Administrators or Admins are well described in a how-to guide instructing Administrators on the use of their powers, which include actions to block users' IP addresses. There is a distinction between a ban and a block. A ban requires "consensus", and is a formal warning without removal of the ability to edit, while a block can be imposed by a single Administrator and prevents editing to some degree, large or small.

The nomination and selection of Administrators is supervised by existing Bureaucrats, who decide whether, in their opinion, a candidate has garnered sufficient support in discussion of their candidacy, a process like that for appointing Bureaucrats. A "consensus" exceeding 70% is required, but the judgement of Bureaucrats is the deciding factor. A list of unsuccessful requests shows the number of refusals peaked at 543 in 2006 with 353 acceptances, and has steadily declined since as the number of applicants has dropped off, with only 155 refusals and 75 acceptances in 2010, and 75 refusals and 46 acceptances as of end of October 2011.

Administrators serve indefinitely, but can be disbarred by Bureaucrats if the Arbitration Committee formally requests it. "Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed only in cases of clear abuse." A possible exception to the "clear abuse" criterion is the Restriction on arbitration enforcement activity, which appropriates to the Arbitration Committee the power to limit an Administrator's activities whenever the Arbitration Committee deems that Administrator "consistently make[s] questionable enforcement administrative actions." and to decommission the Administrator if they override another Administrator's actions without the Arbitration Committee's written authorization or "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors".

As of 2009 there had been 47 removals during the history of WP, and following 2009 no public record has been maintained of these actions. Of the approximately 1,526 Administrators empowered, 207 (or 13.5%) have declared themselves open to recall under circumstances devised by themselves. There is a provision for possible removal of inactive Administrators.

Although attempts have been made to implement a community-based removal of Administrators, none ever has been agreed upon.

Arbitration Committee

Arbitration Committee members or Arbs act in concert or in sub-groups to impose binding solutions to conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve, mainly by imposing, or defining violations under which they will impose, bans and blocks upon users' IP addresses. Though disputes commonly arise over content, ArbCom explicitly excludes all content issues from their deliberations and focuses upon disciplinary actions. Aside from enforcing an end to disputes, ArbCom has the authority to request Bureaucrats to exercise de-Adminship. Arbitrators are elected annually in one-year or overlapping two-year terms, and also can be appointed directly by Wales. The election rules are debated each year.

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia is one of thirteen projects of Wikimedia, owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Among the functionaries of WikiMedia are the Stewards of the Wikimedia wikis who have complete access to the wiki interface on all Wikimedia wikis, including the ability to change any and all user rights and groups; and the SysOps of the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, who manage and maintain the Wikimedia Foundation servers. The tools used by the Stewards in exercising control over the wikis of Wikimedia are described in a handbook. Some indication of the control given to Stewards and System Administrators can be found on the WikiMedia web pages.

The overall control is by the ten-member Wikimedia Board of Trustees one of whom is Jimmy Wales. The present membership is found here.

Editing environment

Wikipedia articles can be edited anonymously by anyone, and contributed by anyone with an account (and anyone can create an anonymous account). A variety of policies, more specific guidelines, and less established essays are intended to "describe its principles and best-known practices", but are not "hard-and-fast rules". In fact, one of the policies of Wikipedia is Ignore all rules, which says: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." That may sound liberating, but it is a freedom most safely exercised by Administrators. There is also a Be bold policy that says "Just do it", but adds "...but please be careful".

It is encouraged that nontrivial changes in content of articles be discussed on the article Talk page to iron out wrinkles without huge numbers of changes back and forth on the Main page. Some behavioral rules are intended to protect the main page, the most obvious one being the three-revert rule that blocks contributors that engage in edit warring. Discussion of content is guided in part by the policies "What Wikipedia is not" and the Five "pillars" of Wikipedia. Cautions to control the temperature on Talk pages are provided: such as No personal attacks, WP is not about winning, Polling is not a substitute for discussion, and so forth. The general concepts of Talk page politeness are subsumed under Wikiquette. Content disputes sometimes can be resolved by formal resolution including mediation.

Although wise, these admonitions and processes do not always suffice, and content issues become mixed up with conduct issues. Talk pages may use policies as weaponry in battles over changes, exchanges called wikilawyering, that is, insisting upon the letter of a policy or guideline while violating its spirit or underlying principles. Policies and guidelines are used pejoratively to describe viewpoints as soapboxing, as parochial POV (point-of-view) forks, original research, fringe theory, employing unreliable sources, or synthesis of sources to support conclusions they do not contain verbatim, or violating a precept of Wikipedia to "present facts, not to teach subject matter". Tempers rise and contributors lose sight of the goals of WP to engage instead in duels of self-importance and gang enforcement. Impatience over content may lead to claims of bad conduct by one or the other disputing party. When conduct is seen as the issue, appeals for arbitration by Administrators or for arbitration by the Arbitration Committee result, requesting that the opposing parties be sanctioned. Once arbitration is invoked, content is no longer the issue, only conduct matters.

Although almost anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia, sanctions result in exceptions: certain individuals are blocked partially or completely, temporarily or permanently, through actions of the Wikipedia administration from Wales on down. These blocking or banning actions tend to be hotly contested, and frequently are sought by contributors that have run into irresolvable conflict over content, or over personalities. It then falls upon individual Admins, or upon a consensus of Admins, or possibly upon ArbCom, to invoke a ban or block. It does occur that such decisions are arrived upon by conversations among Admins or ArbCom members not open to the public, or are made by individual Admins upon their personal assessment, and the results announced with only broad-brush explanation, and next to no attempt to provide a "legal" basis for the action based upon the Wikipedia policies and guidelines. These governing rules are held to be not hard-and-fast, but are to be handled with "common sense".

More about arbitration

(PD) Image: John R. Brews
Requests by contributors for arbitration by year on Wikipedia. (Data from Wikipedia.)

As shown to the right, the number of requests for formal arbitration cases has declined steadily with time, and the number of cases accepted for hearing has dropped to about a dozen per year. Explanation of these declines is ambiguous. One explanation is that both arbitrators and litigants are becoming disenchanted with arbitration cases. In any case, these numbers do not reflect the large number of bans/blocks exercised by administrators without formal arbitration.

According to Wikipedia:

Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules, Wikipedia policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense.

The liberty for Admins to exercise "common sense" and the Ignore all rules policy relieves rulings from strict requirement that they be based upon guidelines or policies. In other words, administration is not a "rule of law". In addition, no requirements exist to insist upon in-depth explanation of rulings, and requests for clarification can be ignored.

Appeals to Admins or to ArbCom do not result necessarily in narrow consideration of direct issues at hand. Rather, the scope of deliberations may be enlarged, or even diverted to interests of Admins and of ArbCom quite apart from community concerns. According to Wikipedia:

Arbitration is not a court case - Arbitration is not a legal process with fixed approaches to problems: all actions and general conduct, not merely the direct issue, may be taken into account. A person's general manner, past actions or incidents, and the impressions of them by reasonable people, may all be used to guide the Arbitrators.

As a result, rulings and actions are free be taken that have no bearing upon the original matter brought for adjudication and instead, to the amazement of those making the appeal, result in actions concerning other issues entirely, never envisioned by the litigants. When ArbCom introduces issues of their own, these are entertained outside the formal framework that safeguards fact finding and organized discussion. In particular, ArbCom may focus their ruling upon their own ideas of "a person's general manner" and/or the "impressions of them by reasonable people", quite apart from community opinion or specifics.

Also according to Wikipedia:

Arbitrators focus on the risk and benefits for the future, not on past issues.

In other words, ArbCom is at liberty to rule based not upon "who said exactly what in the past", nor upon what is before them, but preemptively, based upon ArbCom predictions of hypothetical future behavior that could affect the project.

An appeals process exists, but overturn is unlikely except in cases of blatant misrule. One might naïvely expect that among the hundreds of administrators, a disputant might find some Admin that would find their protests worth consideration. However, shopping for any opinion (even neutral opinion) is considered to be campaigning or possibly votestacking (selective invitation of favorable support), considered to be deliberate disruptions of dispute resolution that are frowned upon. Use of e-mail to solicit opinion is called stealth canvassing and is "looked at more negatively" than contact via user talk-pages. Despite such restrictions upon finding support, it was found that indeed Admin support for litigants occasionally did occur, especially in cases of egregious abuse of authority. Apparently fearing wars between their numbers, ArbCom passed an Enforcement Motion expressly to prevent any Admin from overturning a prior action by another Admin under the threat of immediate stripping of powers (deSysOpping). Consequently, any Admin protest over another Admin's actions is subject to protracted and tendentious review with a serious downside that strongly discourages such actions. That leaves a litigant with only a formal submission of an appeal to ArbCom or to Wales. It may be observed that ArbCom may be ruling upon an appeal of its own ruling, and Wales has little time to dig into disputes: "it is exceedingly unusual for him to intervene".

Expert opinion

As a caution to an expert considering contributing to Wikipedia, it may be noted that expert opinion may be challenged. Attempts to educate the unversed via an on-line article Talk page possibly will not be well received, and impatience with detailed discussion may land the expert in arbitration. Once there, the deciding Admins or ArbCom may view an extended Talk-page exchange not so much as a patient attempt at education, but more as evidence of an unduly stubborn and persistent "general conduct". This viewpoint is readily understood if one realizes that arbitrators are blind to content, and are inclined to entertain claims that the expert "just refuses to understand" without regard to what is to be understood. If education on a Talk page is difficult, imagine educating a panel of judges where specific content is explicitly ruled out of consideration, and one's behavior is the focal issue!

The difference between edit warring as disruptive behavior and as an attempt to straighten out what an article says may depend upon who is considering the issue.

Although edit warring in principle refers to Main-page editing, in practice it is considered disruptive to argue too much on the Talk page as well, especially by contributors not inclined to discussion, or finding themselves on the short end. Although reversion of Talk-page contributions is not allowed and does not occur, extended discussion may be labeled as tendentious editing, a form of misconduct.

Policies

Wikipedia has policies that "all editors should normally follow" unless the rules contradict "common sense". These policies have developed by consensus over time. The neutral point of view or NPOV policy recommends that articles represent a wide variety of opinions while remaining neutral. A "simple formulation" of this policy is given as: "Assert facts, including facts about opinions - but do not assert the opinions themselves". The neutrality policy also disallows moralizing, preferring to let the facts "speak for themselves". In the section on balance, the policy asserts that viewpoints should be weighted according to their prominence. On an article on the Holocaust, for instance, it would be required to point out that the opinions of Holocaust deniers (or 'revisionist scholars') make up a tiny proportion of the learned opinion on the subject. The policy also bans "POV forks", that is articles about existing topics that contain just supportive or critical material. If one were to start an article entitled "Benefits of Homeopathy" because the article on Homeopathy was considered too critical or sceptical, this would be considered a breach of the neutrality policies.

Wikipedia recommends that claims in articles be verifiable, which generally means that "reliable" sources must be pointed out so that readers can follow up and verify Wikipedia's claims. Original research and writing is not allowed on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's "Be bold" policy, which has become widely used on other wikis and collaborative projects, encourages participation by letting people just jump in, even at risk of breaking other policies.

To avoid deletion, new or proposed articles must satisfy several criteria that are enforced by the site's administrators: notability, verifiability (not 'truth'), reliability of sources and neutral point of view. "Information cannot be included solely for being true or useful." In addition, new articles can be 'speedily deleted' by administrators if the author fails to assert the significance of the subject. An example of the latter occurred in September 2007, when a row erupted over the deletion of a 'stub' article started by co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Criticisms and controversies

Due to Wikipedia's practice of allowing anonymous editing by anyone with access to the Internet, it is subject to some criticisms. For example, the stability of articles is uncertain, and their quality fluctuates with time as more and less competent writers modify articles, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Sometimes entire articles disappear, being shortened and absorbed into more general articles, and sometimes subtopics are enlarged to become articles in their own right. It may disconcert readers and authors of careful articles to see them changed beyond recognition.

As another example of the consequences of anonymous editing by anyone, Wikipedia has been criticized for factual inaccuracy and for vulnerability to vandalism. A notorious incident involving Wikipedia's inaccuracies was the John Seigenthaler biography controversy, in which an anonymous Wikipedia editor wrote a biography of a John Seigenthaler alleging that Seigenthaler was involved in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

In July 2006, The New Yorker ran an extensive article about WP by 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Stacy Schiff, discussing WP's accuracy and editorial policies. The article included material from a telephone interview with a high-ranking Wikipedia administrator called "Essjay", who was discovered later to have lied about his career, background, and academic credentials, leading to a rare apology by The New Yorker:

Editors’ Note: The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay, whose responsibilities included handling disagreements about the accuracy of the site’s articles and taking action against users who violate site policy. He was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.” Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of Wikipedia’s management team because of his respected position within the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user page. At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia administrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

In March 2007, Jimmy Wales asked Essjay to resign his "positions of trust" so as to maintain WP's "twin pillars of trust and tolerance", adding "the harmony of our work depends on human understanding and forgiveness of errors." Apparently this action was not taken because of lying about credentials to make a fake persona, but because "EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes."

In June, 2007, the Wikimedia Foundation hit the headlines again over a prescient announcement of the death of professional wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and son, placed on the Wikinews site hours before police discovered the bodies. Georgia police told reporters that the information had been a significant hindrance to their investigations. The individual responsible was traced via their IP address, and claimed the apparent foreknowledge was fortuitous. No charges were filed against the writer.

Also in June, as reported in Wikipedia's own on-line newspaper, in rejecting an attempt to register a trademark, the UK Intellectual Property Office based their decision in part on the Wikipedia article on Formula One motor racing. Despite noting that Wikipedia could host "potentially libellous statements", the final ruling extensively quotes Wikipedia sources and includes a claim by author David Landau that "inherently, I cannot see that what is in Wikipedia is any less likely to be true than what is published in a book or on the websites of news organisations". As unreported on Wikipedia, Landau also noted that the material referred to contains "the history and background of F1 racing, nothing particularly controversial."

In October 2011, users of the Italian version of Wikipedia opted to suspend the site due to the possibility of a new law being passed in Italy that would possibly allow legal action over material believed offensive.

Forks and spin-offs

The concept of Wiki's collaborative projects, along with criticisms of Wikipedia, has led to the emergence of several forks and spin-offs of Wikipedia. Examples include Wikinfo, a fork created by Fred Bauder; Conservapedia, a Wiki-style encyclopedia for political conservatives; Veropedia, founded by Danny Wool, which, funded by advertising, copied and fixed selected Wikipedia articles, and New World Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia written by "editors with academic and literary qualifications" but all from the perspective of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, launched in 2008. The Citizendium, an encyclopedic project established by Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, was originally a Wikipedia fork. Sanger has criticised numerous aspects of Wikipedia, including lack of respect for expertise and the dominance of 'difficult people' or trolls. The Citizendium differs primarily from Wikipedia in that its chief goal is to have "reliable" and high-quality content. It hopes to achieve that goal by only allowing users with real-name registration to edit, while giving experts in a particular field more authority regarding its content.

Development of editing restrictions

In June 2010, the English Wikipedia introduced editing restrictions known as 'Pending Changes'. Pages under Pending Changes protection may be edited by anybody, but changes by unregistered users must be approved by a reviewer. This has been rolled out on German Wikipedia but currently sits in limbo on English Wikipedia.

Such an approach has been compared to the Citizendium, though founder Larry Sanger has stated that this approach will not solve the problems endemic to the site, such as extensive duplication from copyrighted texts and persistent disputes over edits, largely because existing contributors "act like each other's editors, forming their requests as orders and in other ways competing to outdo each other".