[p2p-research] Wikiversity’s potential in global capacity building

Thu Feb 19 21:57:42 CET 2009

Dear Tere,

It's so bad that "deletionpedia" has better quality articles (in a
growing number of areas) at this point

See this in regards to corruption:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/12/04/0333252.shtml?tid=267

The fish rots from the head down.

Also, Jimmy Wales has a conflict of interest in running Wikia, a
commercial venture that aims to apply semantic web technology to a
wikipedia like service. Wikia was started after I had written about
applying semantic tech to Wikipedia itself. But he actually not only
applying the concept to a commercial for-profit venture but in doing
so he's sucking creative ideas away from wikipedia and funneling them
into what makes him money. Wikia now hosts "semantic mediawiki" which
was designed originally with the hope of its adoption by Wikipedia.
But on a more broader scale, Wales is leveraging wikipedia and his
status there to make money with Wikia. If no one else gets this, then
oh well... But I can write a 3 page article on it, easily with
researched facts and links.

Marc

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Wikipedia_Controversies
>
> Tere,
>
> since you ask, here's the overview of the main arguments
>
> from
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-something-fundamentally-wrong-with-wikipedia-governance-processes/2008/01/07
>
> point 4, 5 and 6 are key, and have only worsened since it was written,
>
> I'm no longer optimistic, I think the Wikipedia's flawed governance is
> beyond repair, there is no social force that could reform it
>
> my key argument: after the victory of the deletionist created artificial
> scarcity and therefore an allocation problem, but without any democratic
> governance structure to accompany it, the problems became structurally
> entrenched
>
> Michel
>
>
> Is something fundamentally wrong with Wikipedia governance processes?
>
> The Wikipedia is often hailed as a prime example of peer production and peer
> governance, an example of how a community can self-govern very complex
> processes. Including by me.
>
> But it is also increasingly showing the dark side and pitfalls of purely
> informal approaches, especially when they scale.
>
> Wikipedia is particularly vulnerable because its work is not done in teams,
> but by individuals with rather weak links. At the same time it is also a
> very complex project, with consolidating social norms and rules, and with an
> elite that knows them, vs. many occasional page writers who are ignorant of
> them. When that system then instaures a scarcity rule, articles have to be
> â€˜notable" or they can be deleted. It creates a serious imbalance.
>
> While the Wikipedia remains a remarkable achievement, and escapes any easy
> characterization of its qualities because of its sheer vastness, there must
> indeed be hundreds of thousands of volunteers doing good work on articles,
> it has also created a power structure, but it is largely invisible, opaque,
> and therefore particularly vulnerable to the well-known tyranny of
> structurelessness.
>
> Consider the orginal thoughts of Jo Freeman:
>
> "Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a
> 'structureless' group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming
> together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure
> itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over
> time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over
> the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities,
> personalities and intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we
> are individuals with different talents, predispositions and backgrounds
> makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis
> whatsoever could we approximate 'structurelessness' and that is not the
> nature of a human group.
>
> Consider also this warning:
>
> Every group of people with an unusual goal - good, bad, or silly - will
> trend toward the cult attractor unless they make a constant effort to resist
> it. You can keep your house cooler than the outdoors, but you have to run
> the air conditioner constantly, and as soon as you turn off the electricity
> - give up the fight against entropy - things will go back to "normal".
>
> In the same sense that every thermal differential wants to equalize itself,
> and every computer program wants to become a collection of ad-hoc patches,
> every Cause wants to be a cult. It's a high-entropy state into which the
> system trends, an attractor in human psychology.
>
> Cultishness is quantitative, not qualitative. The question is not "Cultish,
> yes or no?" but "How much cultishness and where?"
>
> The Wikicult website asserts that this stage has already been reached:
>
> With the systems, policies, procedures, committees, councils, processes and
> appointed authorities that run Wikipedia, a lot of intrinsic power goes
> around. While most serious contributors devotedly continue to contribute to
> the implied idealism, there are those with the communication and political
> skill to place themselves in the right place at the right time and establish
> even more apparent power. Out of these, a cabal inevitably forms; the rest,
> as they say, is history.
>
> Specialized sites have sprung up, such as the Wikipedia Review, monitoring
> power abuse in general, or in particular cases
>
> The Wikipedia Review offers an interesting summary of the various criticisms
> that have been leveled agains the Wikipedia, which I'm reproducing here
> below, but I'm adding links that document these processes as well. Spend
> some time on reading the allegations, their documentation, and make up your
> own mind.
>
> My conclusion though is that major reforms will be needed to insure the
> Wikipedia governance is democratic and remains so.
>
> 1. Wikipedia disrespects and disregards scholars, experts, scientists, and
> others with special knowledge.
>
> "Wikipedia specifically disregards authors with special knowledge,
> expertise, or credentials. There is no way for a real scholar to distinguish
> himself or herself from a random anonymous editor merely claiming scholarly
> credentials, and thus no claim of credentials is typically believed. Even
> when credentials are accepted, Wikipedia affords no special regard for
> expert editors contributing in their fields. This has driven most expert
> editors away from editing Wikipedia in their fields. Similarly, Wikipedia
> implements no controls that distinguish mature and educated editors from
> immature and uneducated ones."
>
> Critique of Wikipedia's open source ideology, as opposed to free software
> principles
>
> 2. Wikipedia's culture of anonymous editing and administration results in a
> lack of responsible authorship and management.
>
> "Wikipedia editors may contribute as IP addresses, or as an ever-changing
> set of pseudonyms. There is thus no way of determining conflicts of
> interest, canvassing, or other misbehaviour in article editing. Wikipedia's
> adminsitrators are similarly anonymous, shielding them from scrutiny for
> their actions. They additionally can hide the history of their editing (or
> that of others)."
>
> 3. Wikipedia's administrators have become an entrenched and over-powerful
> elite, unresponsive and harmful to authors and contributors.
>
> "Without meaningful checks and balances on administrators, administrative
> abuse is the norm, rather than the exception, with blocks and bans being
> enforced by fiat and whim, rather than in implementation of policy. Many
> well-meaning editors have been banned simply on suspicion of being
> previously banned users, without any transgression, while others have been
> banned for disagreeing with a powerful adminâ€™s editorial point of view.
> There is no clear-cut code of ethics for administrators, no truly
> independent process leading to blocks and bans, no process for appeal that
> is not corrupted by the imbalance of power between admin and blocked editor,
> and no process by which administrators are reviewed regularly for
> misbehaviour."
>
> Overview of developments
>
> The blog Nonbovine ruminations critically monitors Wikipedia governance
>
> The Wikipedia has stopped growing because of the deletionists: Andrew Lih ;
> Slate
>
> Wikipedia's abusive bio-deletion process: case by Tony Judge
>
> 4. Wikipedia's numerous policies and procedures are not enforced equally on
> the community, popular or powerful editors are often exempted.
>
> "Administrators, in particular, and former administrators, are frequently
> allowed to trangress (or change!) Wikipedia's numerous policies, such as
> those prohibiting personal attacks, prohibiting the release of personal
> information about editors, and those prohibiting collusion in editing."
>
> The undemocratic practices of its investigative committee
>
> A personal experience
>
> The badsites list of censored sites belonging to Wikipedia's enemies
>
> Lack of transparency and accountability
>
> The Judd Bagley case
>
> InformationLiberation on Wikipedia's totalitarian universe
>
> 5. Wikipedia's quasi-judicial body, the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is at
> best incompetent and at worst corrupt.
>
> "ArbCom holds secret proceedings, refuses to be bound by precedent, operates
> on non-existant or unwritten rules, and does not allow equal access to all
> editors. It will reject cases that threaten to undermine the Wikipedia
> status quo or that would expose powerful administrators to sanction, and
> will move slowly or not at all (in public) on cases it is discussing in
> private."
>
> Monitoring of ArbCom's activities
>
> Summary of criticisms
>
> The case of the secret mailing list for top insiders
>
> 6. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization legally responsible for
> Wikipedia, is opaque, is poorly managed, and is insufficiently independent
> from Wikipedia's remaining founder and his business interests.
>
> "The WMF lacks a mechanism to address the concerns of outsiders, resulting
> in an insular and socially irresponsible internal culture. Because of
> inadequate oversight and supervision, Wikimedia has hired incompetent and
> (in at least one case) criminal employees. Jimmy Wales for-profit business
> Wikia benefits in numerous ways from its association with the non-profit
> Wikipedia."
>
> The Foundation's budget
>
> Wikimedia chairwoman rejects demand for transparency
>
> Review of the conflict of interest issue
>
>
> Misc:
>
> -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/conflict-arbitration-at-the-wikipedia/2009/02/10
>
> -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/banning-the-wikipedia-bans-as-a-governance-tool/2008/11/21
>
> -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/update-on-the-bagley-wikipedia-controversy/2008/10/26
>
> - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-it-time-to-go-beyond-wikipedia/2008/11/11
>
> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:18 AM, Tere Vadén <tere.vaden at uta.fi> wrote:
>>
>> > This is perhaps a good moment to ask Tere explicitely how they see their
>> > relation to the wikipedia and the wikimedia foundation, especially in
>> > the light of their problems with democratic governance?
>> >
>> > Michel
>> >
>>
>> I forwarded the question to my co-authors as well, and here is what I got:
>>
>> Teemu, who, btw, is a member of the foundation's advisory board, replied
>> in Finnish that he does not see/recognise a problem with regard to
>> democratic governance.
>>
>> Juha wrote: "I am not aware of the possible democracy gaps in Wikipedia
>> besides the obvious problems relating to the epistemological questions of
>> specific article topics (what is worth knowing, what information gets
>> through as a WP article etc.), and some stupid censors (a.k.a admins). But
>> all and all, I hope that Wikiversity will develop as a true grassroots
>> movement, that is, as much as possible as a bottom-up endeavor. What else
>> that means in practice than that those who participate share some common
>> elements of .... decency, honesty, openness etc. (Marxist tells that she is
>> a Marxist as well as Christian fundamentalist)..."
>>
>> I really have not much add to Juha. So this seems to be a good time for
>> everybody to instruct us on what *are* the problems of democratic
>> governance. Links would be fine! :)
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
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>
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