Behind every article is a community of Wikipedians who vigorously pour their research and editing skills into every article. They share a common goal to make Wikipedia the most informative and accurate encyclopedia. Creating an account with Wikipedia is easy, and all that is needed to set-up an account is a username and password. Whether you claim your username with your professional title, real name, or remain pseudonymous, your edits and arguments will be judged on their merits. Once you create an account you will be welcomed to Wikipedia with a complex introduction page that features tutorials to inaugurate a new member into the Wikipedia community.
Wikipedia has many social features to participate and engage with members of the community. You can utilize meeting spaces in the discussions, edits, and My talk. These sections serve as asynchronous forums because members do not all have to be present at the same time. For example, members can read discussion comments about a particular topic that has been previously collaborated or edited by other participants and then add to them. The “discussion” and “edit” sections are clickable tabs found above each article, and act as meeting spaces for members to dispute the facts of an article or to incorporate additional information (images, links, sources, text, etc.). For example, if you want to collaborate on an article entitled, “The Great Barrier Reef,” you can either click “Discussion” or “Edit” tab located at the top of the article. “My Talk” pages also function as a meeting space because Wikipedians use “My Talks” as user profiles. There are also no flesh meets.
With the provided meeting spaces offered by Wikipedia, members have an important role and identity within this community. The community is based on a hierarchy that runs from most active to least active member. The community members who are the most active and trustworthy are given greater editorial control. In other words, they can be nominated as administrators, arbitration members, bureaucrats, arbitrator, or stewards. The following describes these positions in depth from the least authority to the greatest authority:
1. Editors: Many editors with accounts obtain access to certain tools that make editing easier and faster. Most of those tools, few learn about, but one common privilege granted to editors in good standing is "rollback", which is the ability to undo edits more easily.
2. Administrators ("admins" or "sysops") have been approved by the community, and have access to some significant administrative tools. They can delete articles, block accounts or IP addresses, and edit fully protected articles.
3. Bureaucrats are chosen in a process similar to that for selecting administrators. There are not very many bureaucrats. They have the technical ability to add or remove admin rights, approve or revoke "bot" privileges, and rename user accounts.
4. The Arbitration Committee is Wikipedia's supreme court. They deal with disputes that remain unresolved after other attempts at dispute resolution have failed. Members of this Committee are elected by the community and tend to be selected from among the pool of experienced admins. This committee can also boot members off of Wikipedia.
5. Stewards are the top echelon of technical permissions, other than the Wikimedia Board of Directors. Stewards can do a few technical things, and one almost never hears much about them since they normally only act when a local admin or bureaucrat is not available, and hence almost never on the English Wikipedia. There are very few stewards.
6. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has several special roles and privileges. In most instances however, he does not expect to be treated differently than any other editor or administrator.
Before requesting or accepting a nomination for these positions candidates have to be active, make regular Wikipedia contributions to articles for at least several months, follow the 5 pillars, and have gained the general trust of the community. Wikipedia contributors and leaders follow five basic principles to enforce meritocracy, communal standards of editorship and conduct. These five pillars operate as laws that help govern and democratize Wikipedia. These five pillars are:
1. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. This pillar defines what Wikipedia is and what it is not. According to the pillar, “it incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers.”
2. Wikipedia has a neutral point of view. This pillar describes the mandatory approach to neutral, unbiased and accurate articles.
3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit and distribute. This pillar prohibits personal views; defines Wikipedia’s role as an encyclopedia of existing recognized knowledge; and states that all content must have credible external sources.
4. Wikipedians should interact in a respectful and civil manner. This pillar compels Wikipedians to find consensus and avoid edit wars even when there is a disagreement.
5. Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Ironically, this pillar states, “Rules on Wikipedia are not carved in stone, and the spirit of the rule trumps the letter of the rule.”
While the first four pillars serve as rules that govern Wikipedia, the last pillar downplays the stringency of the laws as a whole. Therefore, the presence of the hierarchy is organized through an ad hoc meritocratic governance. Wikipedia is an “adhocracy” because the community functions as a self-correcting form of democracy (hence, “adhocracy”). Any knowledge that is posted can and most likely will be revised and corrected by readers. The continued ad hoc approach of Wikipedia contributes directly to the advent of its hierarchy; those users most active in editing content and engaging with the edits of others rise to greater visibility within the Wikipedia community. However, when they rise to greater visibility they have the potential to become either a leader or an outcast. Ultimately, then, Wikipedians can rise or descend in status depending on their content development process.
With the pillars in place, most Wikipedians use those regulations as guidelines to help them understand the definition of good content development. However, others will break those regulations established by the pillars, and in turn will have the potential to be booted off. First I will explain what makes a member an exemplar of Wikipedia. Good content development can be achieved through the various avenues within editing. In other words, Wikipedians can build up their repertoire by editing grammar, reverting vandalism, writing articles, and verifying sources. For instance, “Antandrus,” a long-term Wikipedian since 2004, built up his repertoire by contributing to content regarding early music in the Renaissance, early Baroque, and Medieval period. By April 2004, he became an administrator for his good content contributions. As an administrator he has continued to write about music, and also decided to edit articles for grammar. On his my talk page, he boasted that he rose up in status because he contributed to 623 articles, edited 90,000 times, and reached number 20 on “Wikipedians by Edit Count” in May 2007. Thus, “Antandrus” exhibited good content development because of the amount of music articles and edits he has contributed to. Another example is “Avraham,” who became an administrator in January 2006, and moved up in status to a steward in May 2006. “Avraham” is a Wikipedian who only takes part in editing articles by verifying sources and fixing grammar mistakes. When he described his philosophy on articles he stated, “I am…a very strong believer in having sources in articles, and quoting them. When an article is unsourced, by nature it is suspect…There are too many unsourced, or poorly sourced articles that people may take for real research on Wikipedia.” Like “Antandrus,” “Avraham” moved up in status by exhibiting good content contributions by editing articles and verifying the sources of articles. “Antandrus,” “Avraham,” and other devotees of Wikipedia are part of a huge self-organizing community that enforces a structure of meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. This community has found a common exigency to edit and expand existing articles, as well as add more articles to create the largest encyclopedia.
Among the devotees, there are some bad apples that vandalize Wikipedia either for propaganda or just to test the limits of the “edit” button. These members are called “sockpuppets” because they create “an online identity for purposes of deception within an online community.” As a result of their vandalism, the Arbitration Committee boots sockpuppets from Wikipedia. For example, “Reaper Eternal” discovered that “Yoyoboy305” vandalized the introduction section of the Church of Scientology article. “Yoyoboy305” falsely stated, “The first Scientology church was incorporated in December 1953 in The 3rd ring of hell” and continued to falsely state, “[Ron] Hubbard had been selling Scientology books and large piles of bull crap.” (See below)
Welcomed Wikipedians who have contributed enough to assume a role in leadership share similar educational backgrounds and gender. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, about 23% of leaders have completed a degree-level education, 26% are undergraduates and 45% have secondary education. Education plays an important role within Wikipedia because you have to at least know how to edit grammar, and when you contribute content within an article you have to at least be knowledgeable about the topic. In other words, it helps to have an educational background or expertise in an area when it comes to editing and/or contributing to content. After seeing numerous “My Talk” pages, I found that users love to boast about their educational background or area of expertise. For example, if you look at the figure below you will see how “Draceo” immediately discussed his academic credentials in his introduction.
“Nucleophilc” is yet another Wikipedian that used his “My Talk” page to boast that he had a Ph.D.
Although the hierarchy is not based on your level of education, it helps to have a high educational background because editing and contributing comes easier, and in turn the more contributions you make, the faster you will rise in status. Wikipedia’s online model similarly reflects our offline lives, where higher education relates to higher status in society.
The Wikimedia Foundation also found a huge gender gap between leaders. Of all the members 87% were male and only 13% were women. Although Wikipedia invites everyone to contribute, these statistics prove to be an uneven balance of the gender population. In light of this issue, I had to analyze what female Wikipedians were saying, and how accurate these statistics are. Two inactive female Wikipedians helped me understand the unfriendly aspects within Wikipedia. For example, “Pmlineditor” stated this on her My Talk:
Although the hostile environment could be one reason for the gender gap, the accuracy of the statistics on the gender gap could also be another reason. In other words, it is quite possible that the percentage of female and male users is skewed because Wikipedians use avatars it is hard to determine who is truly male or female. Thus, the statistics do not take that into account, and there may not actually be a gender gap.
Without analyzing Wikipedia as whole, you would never guess the eccentricity of the Wikipedian community and structure. However, Wikipedians hold great importance in our society because they are on a grand mission to gather the sum of all human knowledge, and to distribute it for free to everyone on the planet in their own language. What it takes to accomplish that mission is an obsessive attention to detail and a tolerance for repetitive facts. They are quality snobs that are dedicated to the accuracy and quality of the encyclopedia. For this reason, the hierarchy and pillars fit well within this community. Without a hierarchy or pillars, Wikipedians might not be as organized or feel as driven to get involved on Wikipedia.
Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1uXpCFMmjHmEwtho7sb4TpHPahdabhuhm3GGkgBLQGXo
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