Wikimedia power structure

The power structure of Wikipedia is a bit complicated at first. This document tries to describe the status quo for Wikipedia as a whole.See elsewhere on meta for suggestions on how this could or should be changed, such as the ideal Wikipedia board, more heat than light, Wikimedia charter, Wikimedia public relations, Wikipedia Peace Process and New Wikipedia order. It also might be helpful to check the links from Wikipedia sociology for more detail.

Wikipedia's present power structure is a mix of anarchic, despotic, democratic, republican, meritocratic technocratic, and even plutocratic elements:

Anarchy

Wikipedia pages can be edited collaboratively by anyone, including anonymous users. Every user starts with these same powers. They can be lost over time (see below) but if our policies (e.g. policies of the English wiki) are followed, it is possible for everyone to become a respected editor.

Respected editors also respect the anarchic "accept all comers" approach to this collaborative endeavour. Newcomers are a valued resource.

Similarly, our guidelines and policies are also worked out and continually changed through collaborative editing and the search for consensus and compromises. Besides the talk pages of the respective policy pages, the mailing lists are used to discuss these matters.

Some of the smaller Wikipedias are essentially anarchies: they have no administrators, and Jimbo Wales cannot understand the language in order to be an effective despot.

Despotism

User:Jimbo Wales is our "benevolent dictator" - we hope that he never becomes our GodKing... He has paid for all of Wikipedia's operations with no financial return whatsoever, and retains a veto right on all decisions. He also sometimes unilaterally announces certain decisions, such as user bans, and has elevated some guidelines to the status of enforced policies.

Regarding bans, Jimbo demands that every ban of a signed in user has to be approved by him, unless the user is a "simple vandal", in which case he can be banned immediately. There is some debate here over the meaning of "simple vandal" here, for example whether it applies solely to article vandalism, or whether it additionally includes vandalism of user pages, as in the case of the ban of en:user:RK by en:user:Eloquence.

Jimbo's active influence is limited, however. That does not mean that he is lazy: He reads almost every post on the mailing lists and responds to many of them, but in most cases, he tries to let the wiki-system and WikiLove work their magic.

Wales largely leaves non-English wikipedias to get on with it, due to language difficulties.

Democracy

Not all conflicts can be resolved through consent, and in many cases, simple votes are organized using only the wikipages as a tool. Virtually all existing voting methods have been tried and used, and no standard has been agreed upon yet.

In March 2003, with Wales' approval, User:Eloquence organized the first official project-wide vote on a Wikipedia policy, on the subject of which articles to include in the Wikipedia total article count (see Article count reform). The voting method used was average voting. The result was accepted, and more official votes on contentious subjects may follow.

Basically, whenever you feel like it, you can try to start a vote on a talk page, but people will probably not participate in it if they think discussion has not yet been exhausted as a way to resolve conflicts of opinion. In general Wikipedia follows a deliberative democracy model, where nothing is in a hurry... it could evolve towards consensus democracy if the will is there.

While Jimbo remains skeptical of voting, he has suggested that he is more willing to accept votes on the non-English Wikipedias, where he is less able to oversee the decision making process. It is mostly likely there that new structures will emerge.

Republic

Some Wikipedia, such as the English, French, Netherlands and Swedish Wikipedias, have a class of administrators (or "sysops"). For information on the specific powers and guidelines for sysops, see:

Though each language has a different culture, generally sysop actions are limited and controlled by "the people at large": most sysops see themselves as servants of the community, not masters. For example, page deletions are transparently logged at (for example) wikipedia:deletion log. The nomination process for sysops also differs between different languages.

While sysops are not technically elected, they are representatives of the larger group of Wikipedia users. Their power is strictly limited, and abuse is (theoretically) punished with its removal. In practice, some users have given up their sysop privileges, but in no cases did they have to be forcibly revoked.

The success of this model suggests that the English Wikipedia might also apply it effectively.

Meritocracy

As an electronic community, Wikipedia depends to a high extent on the software it uses. This software is developed as open source by volunteer developers. New developers have to submit patches to the existing coders and, if their patches are of high quality, ultimately get write access to the code and can make their own changes. (The write access is somewhat less open than on the wiki itself, because the software should remain functional at any given time.) Very highly involved developers may get access to the Wikipedia servers, giving them even greater technical power over the project. The controlling process at work, at least theoretically, is that those developers with the greatest ability (and motivation) should have the highest access level in the system.

Plutocracy

"Those who pay the bills make the rules" is a common adage. It is hardly true on Wikipedia, but the openness of Wikipedia allows anyone with enough financial resources to fund extensive development in a specific area or work on a specific range of topics. This work could then be used in discussions as leverage to implement certain policies -- generally, people who contribute a lot are less questioned because they enjoy the respect of the community.

Certainly this is the weakest element in the Wikipedia power structure, but it will grow in importance now that the Wikimedia Foundation has begun to take donations -- when money is explicitly involved, the influence of those who have it tends to increase. See the Disinfopedia for some analysis of the impact of money on opinion in the larger world.

Technocracy

Underlying all of the above is a technocracy. Certain people have power to develop and change code. Others have power to block IP numbers or even named accounts. And underlying all that, someone - Jim Wales and eventually the Wikimedia Foundation - owns the servers. Sometimes a Wikipedia Vicious Cycle with strong elements of technological escalation, use of bots, many accounts, access to server logs, etc., takes over, and it is resolved ultimately by "who has the technological power."