[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's administrative system

Sat Jun 17 21:11:40 UTC 2006

On 6/17/06, Dabljuh <samw at student.ethz.ch> wrote:
> 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).

I just wanted to address this paragraph in particular.

Edit counts mean absolutely nothing in day-to-day interactions except
when a user is very very very new (i.e., they have less than 50 edits
or so). I think it is a safe generalization to say that very new users
are indeed not often valued as much as long-time contributors. There
are sane reasons for that, even if we do want to say that new users
are always welcome.

If one could actually correlate edit counts to success on the Wiki —
something for which I imagine there is a high possibility, even if it
has not here been proven — it is likely because a user with a large
number of edits has invested more time here, understands how things
work a bit better, and understands what sorts of arguments do and do
not register. (New and outraged users usually think that decrying
"censorship" is a useful strategy, for some reason; in reality, it
just makes them look like total nutballs who can't construct a
convincing argument.) It is also the case that users who stick around
and edit a lot are likely to be noticed and recognized by others as
good editors, and others are more likely to be sympathetic to them.

It is not the case the edit counts, as raw numbers, mean much. I do
not know my own edit count nor anyone else's who has been around
enough for me to notice them positively. I suspect others' experiences
are similar. The only place where I have ever seen quantitative edit
counts discussed and compared is the Request for Adminship page, where
it is used as an acknowledged rough metric for editing experience.

Just my two cents. I think there is a minority of Wikipedia admins who
actually do make things miserable for others in various ways, and I
think it is very possible that certain variations of "groupthink" do
end up having unpleasant effects. (The neverending search for
"potentially offensive usernames" is a ridiculous and current example
of this, in my opinion. If it is not offensive enough to generate
numerous recommendations to change it, it is not offensive enough for
me to give a damn, personally.)

But beyond those feelings, I do not think that Wikipedia is "rotten to
the core", and I do not think that most administrators abuse their
powers in content disputes, which seems to be the chief allegation in
this screed.

FF