My book Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (2010, The MIT Press) is now available. While I have long anticipated its publication, it’s hard to believe the day is finally here! Please do check out the book’s website, which includes the foreword, preface, introduction, notes and bibliography. I’ll also collect links to interviews and reviews there. Also, feel free to leave any comments on it below.
Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s style of collaborative production has been lauded, lambasted, and satirized. Despite unease over its implications for the character (and quality) of knowledge, Wikipedia has brought us closer than ever to a realization of the century-old pursuit of a universal encyclopedia. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia is a rich ethnographic portrayal of Wikipedia’s historical roots, collaborative culture, and much debated legacy.
Read more at https://reagle.org/joseph/2010/gfc/.
Ported/Archived Responses
Seth Finkelstein on 2010-09-26
Note, folks, you should be able to get the book from one of the
older, non-exploitative, institutions of free culture - the public
library.
Joe, after going through chapter 1, sadly my
initial impression was also negative. Obviously you put a lot of work
into this, and while I can respect the effort to do scholarship, the
perspective seems problematic.
Basically, it struck me as
extremely credulous, and regurgitating the most self-promotional
presentations as profound truth.
Here’s a simple question -
Is there anywhere in the book where you write something along
the lines of “The Wikipedia community tells itself a nice story here,
but it’s a fiction which covers up the following cultural
dysfunction.”?
Can you provide a quick counter-example to
argue against the view that this is functionally a verbose marketing
brochure for Wikipedia?
Barry Kort on 2010-09-27
(Seth?) “The Wikipedia
community tells itself a nice story, but it’s a fiction which covers up
a systemic cultural dysfunction.”
Self-delusion has plagued
humankind since the dawn of civilization, notwithstanding the valiant
efforts of scientists, academics, historians, psychologists,
sociologists, and journalists to get the story straight.
While the systemic cultural dysfunction, tragic misconceptions, and
self-delusions of WikiCulture are manifestly apparent, it’s not clear to
me that the Wikisphere is any more misguided than the rest of human
culture, worldwide, then or now.
(Greg?) “You’re only looking
at the behaviors and comments of those left behind after the
pogroms.”
Greg has a point. The Pogrom Managers have
indeed been busy of late, but Stoned Palls do not a Prison make.
(Joseph?) “Wikipedia Review
is a forum dedicated to scrutinizing and reporting upon the flaws of
Wikipedia. Decent content and commentary can sometimes be found there,
but there are also a significant amount of gossip, personal attacks, and
vitriol.”
The site is indeed notable for hosting the
Olympiad of Trash Talking of Wretched Excess, but it’s nothing that
can’t be remedied with Moar Song Parodies.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
I don’t think comparing Wikipedia with a repressive political regime
is a good analogy. One is a state actor with an ability to significantly
harm the rights or safety of people. (Yes, Wikipedia has issues with
questions of defamation, which I am not denying, but speaking of purges
and pogroms seems hyperbolic.)
However, when it comes to
this question of balance, historical arguments are always personal
arguments. I think a scholar has an obligation to address, or at least
identify, significant counter-arguments, which I do. However, I make no
claim of perfect objectivity. With respect to ethnography, one of the
important papers for me are Golden-Biddle and Locke’s (1993) “Appealing
work: An investigation of how ethnographic texts convince” where by one
strives to exhibit authenticity, plausibility and criticality. I
attempted to engage those strategies, so, of course, some might find my
efforts lacking. And, of course, they are free to pursue their own
research and publish their own results.
Unfortunately, I
expect this is all the time I have for this discussion at the
moment.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
And I don’t think I’m obliged to have to do what you tell me,
particularly on my own blog. If there is a concern about quantitative
attempts to characterize Wikipedian interaction, one naturally looks to
the literature. That’s the closest work to your concern and where one
might start working from if you really wanted to take up that
issue.
I’m quite keen on discussion and scholarship that
helps us understand Wikipedia; historical arguments that place it in
context; sociological investigations that lead to or apply models/theory
of community, decision making, and leadership; etc.
But I
have not set as my goal to participate in endless bickering or
convincing those that “vomit” (as your thread has it) at the mere
thought that Wikipedia has interesting prosocial cultural norms. I never
expected to change any Reviewers minds on this, and I’d rather spend my
time and efforts elsewhere.
Kelly Martin on 2010-09-27
Peter, I wouldn’t say it’s the norm; most Wikipedia topic are either
entirely unowned or owned by default because either nobody or only one
person cares about them. However, it is certainly the norm in
situations that involve any sort of conflict.
As an aside,
it is difficult to do research on how many pages are “unowned” because
Wikipedia’s administration considers the information about how many
watchers a page has to be highly sensitive information. At least one
admin has been defrocked of that role for revealing such information.
Another example of how the culture that actually exists in Wikipedia
doesn’t measure up with that which Joseph describes in his book.
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
Is chapter 7 essentially ’encyclopedic anxiety? You have a
presentation here.
https://reagle.org/joseph/Talks/2008/0207-ch7-enc-anxiety.html
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
(Joseph?). I am intrigued
that you removed my comments. I don’t know why you regard them as civil
and uninformed. On the question of balance,
(a) does it
not occur to you that the existence of a forum (the Wikipedia Review)
dedicated to scrutinising and reporting on the failures of Wikipedia is
itself an indication of serious flaws in the project?
(b)
you haven’t answered Seth’s question: is there anywhere in the book
where you write something along the lines of “The Wikipedia community
tells itself a nice story here, but it’s a fiction which covers up the
following cultural dysfunction.”? Is that what you say in chapter 7?
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-28
Kelly’s argument that most of the work of real importance done at WP
is through battle, rather than collaboration, much of which is
orchestrated in secret, is a plausible argument. One that is no doubt
true in (at least?) some circumstances. However, it is not the one I
found to be most prevalent or characteristic of WP.
And, I
think Jason is quite right, it’s time for me to put this thread to rest
here at least. Though people are of course free to maintain their own
opinions and discussion elsewhere.
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
>>However, when it comes to this question of balance,
historical arguments are always personal arguments.
All
arguments are personal arguments, i.e. argued by people. The question
is to what sense they are compelling, cogent, evidenced, analytical
etc. The problem I see with your work (and I have read considerably
more than just the first chapter of your book) is that you give very few
actual arguments. You merely cite other authors (profusely so) without
any attempt at analysis and assessment of what they say. I could give
you examples if you wish.
>>I think a scholar has an
obligation to address, or at least identify, significant
counter-arguments, which I do.
Where? I don’t see you
addressing any of the main arguments concerning the dysfunctionality of
Wikipedia in any of the work that I have read. I commented
https://reagle.org/joseph/blog/social/wikipedia/nrhm-be-nice?showcomments=yes#comment_social_wikipedia_nrhm_be_nice1282035257.63
in an earlier post of yours here that while you mention Sanger by name
you provide no discussion or analysis of any of Sanger’s very cogent and
coherent analysis of Wikipedia. Sanger is one of Wikipedia’s most
prominent and insightful critics. I find it astonishing you do not
engage with any of what he says. Or if you do, where? Citation please
:)
>>However, I make no claim of perfect objectivity.
There is no objectivity at all. Vacuous citations of other
authors, many of whose work is almost as vacuous as your own, is not a
substitute for compelling, cogent and insightful analysis.
>>With respect to ethnography, one of the important papers for me
are Golden-Biddle and Locke’s (1993) “Appealing work: An investigation
of how ethnographic texts convince” where by one strives to exhibit
authenticity, plausibility and criticality.
There you go
again. You cite some authority without explaining their views or
arguments, without putting them in context and without any attempt at
analysis. This is futile.
>> I attempted to engage
those strategies, so, of course, some might find my efforts lacking.
Why? Explain how this sentence follows in any way from the one
which proceeded it.
And as TFA has just pointed out, you
have failed (or have refused) to respond to any of the questions posed
to you above.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-20
Thank you Sage.
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
Kelly’s comments are spot-on, and well-informed (she is ex-member of
arbitration committee). The problem is that controlling a page and
defeating an opponent by exhaustion is the norm, not the exception (as
Kelly correctly says).
Joseph, doesn’t it disturb you that
important issues, matters of fact, are being controlled in this way? I
could give you scores of examples.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
Goodness! The wave of negative comments surely means that the folks
at Wikipedia Review have taken notice, and checking the threads, indeed
this is the case.
For those not familiar, Wikipedia Review
is a forum dedicated to scrutinizing and reporting upon the flaws of
Wikipedia. Decent content and commentary can sometimes be found there,
but there are also a significant amount of gossip, personal attacks, and
vitriol.
Since I see some of the, self-described,
“nastier” comments have already been archived there and then claimed to
have been censored before I even noticed them, I’ve gone ahead and
removed them. I intend the comments feature on this blog to be a place
for civil and informed discussion.
This of course raises
the question of content discrimination, where to draw the line, etc. I
will try to remain as open as possible, but can make no guarantees to
make everyone happy or not close things for a bit and take a
wiki-holiday.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
(Gregory?): I encourage you to pick it up at the library! As I note in the preface, I wrote most of it in a public library in Brooklyn :-) . However, I suspect you may not find it satisfying. I can tell you now that while I did endeavor to reference significant and substantive criticism on the themes I engage (e.g., from Sanger, Carr, Gorman, Lanier, Keen, Helprin, Orlowski, etc. on themes of collaborative practice, universal vision, encyclopedic impulse, and technological inspiration) I do conclude Wikipedia to be a remarkable phenomenon as the latest (and most successful, despite faults) project in the long pursuit of a universal encyclopedia.
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
Joseph, you haven’t explained why you removed my previous comments.
Moving on, you say “Wikipedia is a massive phenomenon, and
people can have varied experiences. I have no doubt that many people (in
absolute terms) have been angered, disappointed, and treated unfairly.
The question then is that the majority of interactions? Relatively
speaking, this has not been my sense of things in watching Wikipedia.
So, here, then is a question of balance. Also, my focus is on
Wikipedia’s culture, so despite particular faults and failings, WP’s
culture at least attempts to encourage pro-social behavior, rather than
anti-social behavior.”
I am wondering how your argument
would deal with the case of a country with a repressive regime. E.g.
Russia in the 1920’s and 30’s. Or China in the 1960’s. You arguments
are as follows:
(1) “It’s a massive phenomenon and people
can have varied experiences.” The same was true Cambodia in the 1970’s
and many had “varied experiences” of that.
(2) On ‘the
majority of interactions’ I’m not sure of what you mean here. In any
repressive regime the number of dissidents is pretty small, let’s say a
significant minority. Did you make any attempt in your book to
interview any of these and make an objective assessment of their
experiences?
(3) You say this was not your “experience of
things”. Did you adopt any specific research methodology to avoid
‘selection bias’ and all the well-known problems of social or historical
commentary?
(4) You say your focus is on Wikipedia’s
culture. Of course, but the critics are claiming that this is the
fundamental problem.
(5) You say that Wikipedia “attempts
to encourage pro-social behavior, rather than anti-social behavior”.
But that is also true of any repressive regime. The question is how to
come to an objective assessment of whether this attempt has succeeded
(in the cultural sense) or not. Most of those who have lived through the
purges and the blockings and bannings would say not.
Kelly Martin on 2010-09-27
If I may add to my last comment, I would point out two additional
points:
First, the intersection of the set of “important”
encyclopedic topics and the set of “controversial” topics on Wikipedia,
is substantial. That is to say, given any topic that a reasonable
person would identify as “important”, there is a good chance that topic
is “controversial” within Wikipedia, and therefore there is either (a)
an ongoing pitched battle to control that article’s content or (b) an
clique of like-minded editors who have successfully established control
of the article and who are actively using Wikipedia’s internal processes
to maintain that control.
There are, of course, many
topics that are not important that are, nonetheless, controversial; I
mentioned “hummus” in my last comment as an example. “Hummus” is
controversial because there is an ongoing dispute on Wikipedia as to
whether hummus originated in Palestine or Israel. Although Wikipedia
policy demands that this dispute be “bracketed”, the participants in
this debate are not interested in agreeing to do so, and the article
will never reflect such bracketing, at least not for long. While, of
course, at any time the article might reflect any of a number of
positions on this dispute as various editors make changes to it, the
long-term average tends to favor one particular position, because the
editors support that point of view are both more numerous and more
skillful at manipulating the community. This doesn’t mean that this
point of view is the factually correct one, in any positive sense of the
word, or that their preferred point of view is “neutral” (whatever that
means). All it means is simply that the advocates for this “majority”
view are more persistent and more clever than their ideological
counterparts, within Wikipedia’s pocket universe.
Unfortunately, the realizations above constitute gross heresy within the
Wikipedia universe, and anyone who expresses them will be quickly
marginalized within the Wikipedia community for it. Wikipedia has a
very low tolerance for those who reject the “mad belief” that
Wikipedia’s format of massive collaboration necessarily leads to truth,
happiness, and light, even when its own servers are littered with the
corpses of editors and articles that every day disprove the very thesis
that your book sets forth as gospel truth.
In 2007 I said
that “open editing is a great way to start an encyclopedia, but it may
not be a good way to finish one”. I stand by that. Wikipedia’s
cultural environment has always lacked the defenses it would need to
defend itself against those who would seek to manipulate it, and indeed
at this point it has been entirely subverted by such persons. Put
shortly, crowdsourcing doesn’t work. Sorry.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
(Gregory?): Wikipedia is a
massive phenomenon, and people can have varied experiences. I have no
doubt that many people (in absolute terms) have been angered,
disappointed, and treated unfairly. The question then is that the
majority of interactions? Relatively speaking, this has not been my
sense of things in watching Wikipedia. So, here, then is a question of
balance. Also, my focus is on Wikipedia’s culture, so despite particular
faults and failings, WP’s culture at least attempts to encourage
pro-social behavior, rather than anti-social behavior.
(Seth?): You might be
disappointed in the balance, but there are references to critics and
failings. In fact, the last substantive chapter (7) is all about
criticism of Wikipedia.
(radek?): I think it would be
interesting to see some contributions with respect to how the culture of
Wikipedia fails, and how those failings are prevented in other
communities.
Kelly Martin on 2010-09-27
I will agree with you that Wikipedia is a remarkable phenomenon.
That appears to be the extent to which agreement is possible,
however.
I will also agree with you that most people’s
interaction with Wikipedia will not be strongly colored by the deeply
dysfunctional culture there, simply because most people’s interactions
with Wikipedia are those of the reader and the casual editor, neither of
which experiences the full pleasure of Wikipedia’s internal strife that
closely or directly.
Indeed, the impact to readers is
mainly limited to being presented with articles that are poorly written
or edited, or occasionally by finding no article at all, because the
editor who might otherwise have written a better article has been
discouraged from editing by contact with this internal strife, and of
course the reader will be unaware of this and will simply leave with
either an ill feeling of being less informed than he or she might like,
or even possibly ignorantly misinformed because the article he or she
did read was the victim of one of the many Wikipedia editors who have
learned to play Wikipedia’s cultural system in order to insert and
defend their personal biases into articles.
The impact to
most casual editors is likewise limited: if one’s editing is limited to
an area of personal predilection and that area is not itself one in
which there is much controversy, then one might edit for months, even
years, without running into one of Wikipedia’s power brokers. I imagine
this tells the tale for most Wikipedians, and their experience quite
likely resembles the gloriously pretty picture you have persistently
tried to paint in your writings.
It is only when one
tries to edit a “controversial” topic, such as (to pick one at random)
“hummus”, that one finds oneself thrown into the Wikipedian equivalent
of a snake pit. Such articles are, in practice, controlled by
relatively small groups of people, who make sure that their personal
views on the topic at hand are preserved. They do this by careful
social and political manipulation within Wikipedia’s environment (and
fairly rarely by appeals to reason or logic) to marginalize and exclude
any editor who attempts to alter the article in a way they disapprove.
It has been frequently noted that a significant fraction
of those Wikipedians who have been banned (other than those who are
banned for repeated petty vandalism) are banned for persistently
expressing viewpoints inconsistent with those preferred by those who
hold power within Wikipedia’s community. This is, of course,
inconsistent with your treatise, just as it is inconsistent with
Wikipedia’s formally-stated policy. But it is the considered experience
of those who watch Wikipedia from the outside that Wikipedia policy is
observed mainly in the breach, and that the actual goings on at
Wikipedia are not even remotely fairly consistent with its formal
policy. Indeed, Wikipedia’s “collaborative” system deals with
ideological conflict by picking a victor by a sociopolitical process
driven mainly by personalities, and then demonizing and excluding all
those who champion inconsistent positions. Once the dust clears and
only the victor is left standing, all is happiness and light (except for
those pushed out into the darkness), and the facade that you have so
carefully described in your book is maintained.
Kelly Martin on 2010-09-27
Joseph, my point is that every article on Wikipedia has the potential
to turn into another hummus. All it takes is one group of people who
refuse to collaborate and who have figured out how to play Wikipedia’s
game of “fake civility” and social manipulation. This has happened to
countless articles, and will happen to ever more articles, with little
hope of reclamation short of the death or disability of the ringleaders
involved.
Virtually all arguments on Wikipedia are
resolved by exhaustion. I have spoken to many many former Wikipedia
editors who left because they ran into a determined and intemperate
editor and elected to quit instead of fight, and in fact this appears to
be one of the most common reasons why people stop editing Wikipedia.
Often enough, the determined and intemperate editor was an administrator
or other well-connected individual. Such editors are actively
interfering with the collaborative process you wax so eloquently about,
and yet their conduct is not the exception in Wikipedia, it is the norm
and is protected, even encouraged, as such, in practice, even as it is
discouraged in policy.
For every example of two editors
resolving a disagreement amiably and reaching a collaborative consensus
I imagine you can find dozens, even hundreds, of examples of one editor
cowing another into either abandoning the dispute or escalating the
dispute into a disagreement that ends in forcible ejection for one or
both parties. Wikipedians crow much about consensus but are indeed
quite bad at practicing it. Note that the case of one editor abandoning
the dispute often leaves little discernable trail; an examination of the
record by someone predisposed to find proof of operating consensus
process will likely interpret such encounters as “successes”.
I think you make the mistake of assuming that “difficult issues”
are rare and infrequent, when in reality they represent the majority of
conflict in Wikipedia. The reason there appears to be relatively little
conflict is that so many articles are edited by only one editor, on
topics that nobody else cares enough about to get into a conflict about,
or else are being edited by people who are merely editing for the sake
of editing, and are not invested enough in the topic to get into a
conflict over them (and indeed may not even care).
The
simple truth is that Wikipedia does not handle conflict well at all,
which was, of course, entirely predictable based on our 40 years of
experience of watching conflict on USENET, a forum which shares a number
of sociological similarities to Wikipedia. However, nobody has
expectations that a newsgroup posting or a comment on an Internet
bulletin board will be “factual”; an encyclopedia, on the other hand,
carries with it other expectations (a topic I think you do touch on,
although I think you do so for different reasons). And there’s no way
to set up a killfile for Wikipedia contributors the way there is on
USENET.
Sage Ross on 2010-09-20
Congrats! My copy from Amazon actually came about two weeks ago, but
I’m glad it’s officially out now.
It’s next on my to-read
list.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
@ Peter, yes, ch7 is entitled encyclopedic anxiety. In the book I
note how openness, consensus, and egalitarianism, for example, are
claimed by Wikipedians but are much more difficult and complex
issues.
With respect to admin power, I write: “In Wikipedia
culture, and in keeping with the larger wiki culture, delineations of
authority are suspect, as is seen in the previous excerpt regarding the
role of administrators. Yet, even if these other levels of authority
entail responsibilities rather than rights – which is the orthodox line
– they could nonetheless be seen as something to achieve or envy if only
for symbolic status.”
Jason Treit on 2010-09-28
Virtually all arguments in human history are resolved by exhaustion. This one’s next.
Peter Damian on 2010-09-27
>> I also think it unfortunate when exhaustion prevails over
good faith discussion, as I note in my book. The question then, is on
the whole, what is more characteristics of WP?
The
characteristic of WP is that, as Kelly says, is that the intersection of
the set of “important” encyclopedic topics and the set of
“controversial” topics on Wikipedia, is substantial. Thus anything
important - the Irish troubles, the Israel-Palestine conflict, global
warming, pedophilia, even Ayn Rand vs Aristotle (my subject area), is a
matter of playground politics and warring. No reasonable person would
put up with this, which is why most decent editors have left, as Kelly
rightly says.
>>I’d love to see the sort of content
analysis that Burke and Kraut (2008) use in “Mind your Ps and Qs: The
impact of politeness and rudeness in online communities
There you go again. Another citation, unexplained, out of context, no
pretence at analysis. You need to stop this.
The Fieryangel on 2010-09-27
Dr. Reagle,
Might I point out that you have not answer
a single one of the questions asked by Peter Damian, by Seth Finkelstein
and by Gregory Kohs. Since civility seems to be an important part of
this interaction (in much the same way it is made to seem that way on
Wikipedia itself), might I ask you politely to try to respond to some of
these concerns, rather than not responding at all and stopping
discussion by censoring comments?
…although this is
certainly much the same way that “civility” is enforced on Wikipedia
itself…
Barry Kort on 2010-09-28
Whether the kerfuffles, brouhahas, breaching experiments, and battles
will dissipate in a tiresome and banal war of attrition, only time will
tell.
But part of the problem with political battles is
that the dominant players tend to bury, redact, and otherwise balete
their rivals, making the historian’s job that much more
challenging.
Joseph, I hope you will spend some time in a
future project exploring the machinations of backstage politics in which
the dominant power players cut off the air supply and otherwise
extinguish the voices, the arguments, and the publications of their
rivals.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
I do know who Kelly is, I very much appreciated speaking with her,
and in emails after wards, in 2006. In fact, I reference one of her
critiques in the book as an example of informed WP criticism.
I also think it unfortunate when exhaustion prevails over good
faith discussion, as I note in my book. The question then, is on the
whole, what is more characteristics of WP? In something as large as WP,
it in part depends on where one is looking, one’s own biases, what one’s
metrics and expectations are, etc. When I describe the debate over
Wikipedia I liken this a bit to a glass half/empty half full. Whichever
glass I am looking at in the massive collections of behaviors and
interactions that happen on WP (and I think I’ve seen a decent bit), I
am none-the-less impressed by the fact that there is at least a glass
half-full of good faith collaboration (or, perhaps, of cool-aid as
Reviewers put it :-) ).
To look at this more
quantitatively, I’d love to see the sort of content analysis that Burke
and Kraut (2008) use in “Mind your Ps and Qs: The impact of politeness
and rudeness in online communities” applied to WP, though it would
certainly be challenging methodologically. (They harvested 576 messages
posted to 12 discussion groups (2004-2006) to build a model of
linguistic politeness.)
radek on 2010-09-26
I’ve been a part of many communities, both online and off, and it’s no exaggeration for me to say that Wikipedia is the most mismanaged, dysfunctional and vicious of these.
Gregory Kohs on 2010-09-25
I read some of the freely-available first chapter, and I immediately recognized that most of its message did not conform at all with my interpretation of the culture that pervades Wikipedia and its management organization. I would not buy this book, but I would read the rest of it if someone gave it to me for free.
Gregory Kohs on 2010-09-27
Dr. Reagle, if you examine a culture that systematically and formally
renounces and exiles any thoughtful critic of said culture, much in the
way you have censored a perfectly innocuous comment left here by scholar
Jon Awbrey along with a highly cogent assessment by Kelly Martin
(herself with over 17,000 edits to Wikipedia), I suspect you will have a
personal “sense of things” that the majority of interactions are
pro-social, rich, collaborative etc.
You’re only looking at
the behaviors and comments of those left behind after the pogroms. And
I would agree with Kelly Martin, that that (along with your purge of
comments here) is willful misrepresentation and bankrupt
scholarship.
I will look for your book in my county
library, in order to read Chapter 7. Or, you could send me a copy of
that chapter for review. I am willing to remain open-minded about your
ability to observe and address criticisms of Wikipedia’s “collaborative”
culture; but thus far, you’re not demonstrating much good faith
yourself.
Kelly Martin on 2010-09-27
My take on your thesis, Joseph, is that you’re confusing the
denotative norms that people pretend to follow on Wikipedia with the
actual ones that are being followed. While many people, especially
those on the periphery of Wikipedia’s core community, ascribe to a
greater or lesser degree to the norms as you describe them, once you get
into the committed core of Wikipedia they are observed mainly in the
breach.
You are, of course, to be blindly optimistic in
your observations of Wikipedia and pretend that such things are not
taking place, but doing so is not really what one would call a
scientifically objective viewpoint. Of course, an additional problem
for someone like you, whose participation in Wikipedia is superficial,
is that you have little or no access to the nonpublic fora in which the
real business of governing Wikipedia takes place. The face you see, as
a casual observer, is quite often the result of careful scripting on at
least some of the parties in any interaction.
I suspect
that most of the “good faith” collaboration on Wikipedia takes place
between people who were predisposed to be collaborative in the first
place: people who share common interests and common viewpoints, and thus
who have no reason to be at significant cross purposes. However, my
experience, in five years of observing Wikipedia, is that this is a rare
thing indeed when the topic is one of significant import, and even more
so of when it’s of significant disagreement.
An example
where this has worked well in Wikipedia is the military history
project. For older battles in wars in decades gone by, there is not a
great deal of dissent; when the literature is confused or unclear or in
disagreement, the editors in question are typically satisfied to
dispassionately say so, simply because there’s no emotional involvement
for any of them on whether it was 1500 or 1750 troops that died in some
obscure battle in the middle of the 17th century. But that breaks down
when the emotions do run long, as is evidenced by the choppy editing and
frequent disputes over topics like the planned Allied invasion of Japan,
and various events surrounding the end of World War II generally.
So, yes, if you pick and choose your topics carefully, avoiding
those on which people have feelings, you will find plenty of evidence
for “collaboration”. However, the more interesting topic to discuss is
examining why people agree to collaborate when they do, and why they
decline to do so when they don’t. Your book suffers (again, from my
reading of the first chapter alone, that being all I have seen) for
having given the impression that such collaboration is the norm when it,
quite frankly, is not, at least if you weight the average by topical
importance. I think you’ll find, if you dig into it, that Wikipedia’s
publish corpus of “social norms” have very little impact on the decision
of individual editors to collaborate in good faith; rather, the ones who
do so brought that value to the table with them, and the ones that don’t
did not.
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
(Kelly?), I agree that in online discourse, very often the loudest and those with the most free time can appear to win. While I would not have thought hummus to be a difficult issue, as I write in the book about a different issue: “As is often the case on difficult issues, the conclusion to this argument was facilitated as much by exhaustion as by reason.”
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-22
Hi Mayo, nice to hear from you! Thank you for the kind words and congratulations on your defense!
Lilburne on 2010-09-27
An example of pettiness of the ‘connected’ admins making up rules in
such a way that is ultimately detrimental to the project.
<a
href=“http://toolserver.org/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=Nastytroll&blocks=true">http://toolserver.org/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=Nastytroll&blocks=true</a>;
Joseph Reagle on 2010-09-27
Peter, I suggest reading the book. I know that I will not likely
satisfy any “Wikipedia Review” contributor, and that many of you are as
inexhaustible in the enthusiasm of your passion (Wikipedia criticism) as
some Wikipedians are in theirs! However, if you read the book, and have
a substantive critique with respect to any of the arguments I make, I
suggest publishing then. For example, one might challenge the following
arguments and theories in an informed way:
1. The
historical argument that Wikipedia belongs in a longer historical
pursuit of universal encyclopedic vision.
2. The model of what can
be called a good-faith collaborative culture and its applicability to
Wikipedia.
3. The model of open content community, and some of the
most important issues associated with the challenges related to
it.
4. The specific challenges associated with consensus
decision-making in such a community.
5. The model of authorial
leadership provided.
6. The historical argument that criticism of
Wikipedia and is also related to criticism of earlier reference
works.
7. The review of significant published criticisms of
Wikipedia (relevant to themes within the book).
Mayo Fuster Morell on 2010-09-22
Dear Joseph!
Congratulations for the book!
Your articles were of great help to build upon for my dissertation on
Governance of online creation communities (which I defended yesterday!);
now I look forward to read your book!!!. You not only had done a great
work, but also had been an important reference for the formation of a
research community on Wikipedia.
Well done! Thank you,
Mayo
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