[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's administrative system

Sat Jun 17 12:36:16 UTC 2006

Wikipedia's administrative system: An MMORPG rotten to the core

The past week or so has unintendedly resulted in a clash between me and what I call the administrative system of Wikipedia, and I couldn't help but notice a number of flaws of process. There is no cabal - But there are factions on Wikipedia. A faction is any number of individuals who collaborate in order to achieve a common goal. The administrative system increasingly shows the sign of such a faction. 

In the middle ages, noblemen were to be tried by their fellow noblemen for their crimes, which resulted in hardly anyone ever getting convicted. Similiarly, the clerical system had jurisdiction over itself - and even gross sexual abuse often went on for years without anyone intervening - if at all.

On Wikipedia, administrators are given authority and technical provisions to punish disruptive users. Some SysOps would point out that the purpose of a block is not to punish, but to prevent - But since a block is not an effective prevention, as it can be evaded at the leisure of any somewhat tech-savy user, it can only serve as punishment and to get rid of unwelcome or different POV editors. 

If blocked, in error or abuse, or even legitimately, an editor has basically no chance to revoke the block. He can no longer edit the relevant pages such as the Administrator's Noticeboard for Intervention. Thus, even though the policy explicitely and uncompromisingly forbids abusing blocked or disruptive users, regardless of their past, an user, once blocked, is realistically considered free game for all sorts of false accusations, abuses, personal attacks and libel. 

Because of the factionalizing mechanics of the administrative system, a blocked user has basically no chance to get an abusive ban lifted. The policy quite clearly states that the originally blocked user is meant to lift blocks he invoked himself. An abusive sysop will simply not do so. And nobody else will. WikiEN-l is a mailing list mostly read by the administrative system itself, who again, naturally, almost always will side with the administrator they know rather than a random editor.

RFComments don't work, neither do RFMediations - especially when blocked. The RfArbitration system is limited by the number of cases the ArbCom can deal with in any given timeframe, and is made a mockery of justice when a blocked user is denied the ability to defend himself. And because the ArbCom members are themselves also part of the administrative system, they again tend side with problematic or long standing administrators much more easily than with problematic or new editors. 

If the wrongly blocked user then decides to ignore the block, and proceeds with the trivial technical task of evading the block, in order to protect himself from false accusations, personal attacks, or - dear lord - continuing to edit mainspace articles or talk pages, this is actually seen as an invitation to administrators to resort to personal attacks, vandalize the user at will - more even than before he becomes "free game", easily resulting in blocks lasting to the end of time, literally forcing an user that wants to contribute to Wikipedia to evade or leave the project.

Ignorance and indifference to policy are normal in today's administrative system of Wikipedia. Completely unfair and unwarranted blocks occur on a daily basis, personal attacks, vandalizations of the userpages of unpopular editors - a strong pecking order. The policies are ignorable, the only thing that counts is "Don't piss off the sysops that have real power".

All of this also undermines the basic content policies of Wikipedia. Adherents of a different POV can be removed easily (although no administrator would ever be caught dead with banning an user on the basis of POV). Not to mention it removes strong editors, and replaces them with weak ones compliant to the POV of increasingly sociopathic administrators having an interest in the article. 

Currently Wikipedia is too much of an MMORPG: If one editor has 500 edits, and another has 20'000, and they have a dispute, the editor with 20'000 edits always wins - especially so when he is a sysop himself, the chances for which increase almost exponentially with the number of posts. This is not a way to find consensus: Consensus must be found in debate. And debate is the hardest of all ways to fight an opposite POV - It is almost always the more successful strategy to get the opposite side blocked than to actually get down and find this sacred consensus (or compromise).

Why are administrators needed in the first place? "To combat vandalism" would most answer. But interestingly, popups, applications, bots, etc are all much more effective than the administrative power to block and to protect an article - These are either trivially easy circumvented by a determined vandal, or undermine the most basic idea of Wikipedia: That everyone can edit it - the very idea that made Wikipedia so popular, and what it is today. Regular editors can patrol RecentChanges just as much as administrators can. The only real necessity for privileged users is the management of the front page - And it doesn't take thousands of administrators to do that. 

The solution to the system is to simply remove all administrative privileges, short of maybe a dozen "hard core" people needed to manage the front page, and instructed not to use their powers for anything in the mainspace. For everything else, regular users are just as well equipped for dealing with vandalism and other disruptive occurances as administrators. And for NPOV: It does not ever serve the neutrality of an article if one party is equipped with the power to block the other party.

Would the removal of all administrators result in more edit warring? Yes of course. Because no longer would one party simply get the opposite party blocked. But edit warring is not effective, it is indeed mutually assured destruction: If two parties simply revert each other all the time, they would never get anywhere - Ultimately even the most stubborn POV warrior realizes he will have to arrange with the other side. Personal attacks? Don't listen to it and grow a skin. Copyvios? Give regular users the ability to remove pictures. Delete and undelete? Merely a technical problem.

Everything is better than compromising the sanity and integrity of the "Encyclopedia" Wikipedia.