A central theme during the first-half of our semester was that for functional goods where MC = 0, anarchic production produces inherently superior products. We defined "anarchic production" as production without property rights, which are fundamentally exclusionary and therefore a barrier to superior production, and Wikipedia was offered to the class as proof of this analytic proposition.

I argue that notwithstanding its lack of property rights, Wikipedia has exclusionary features that result in exclusionary consequences mirroring those property rights produce. While this exclusion does not cut against Wikipedia's qualitative superiority, it raises the question whether Wikipedia's content production is truly "anarchic." At this point, a fair critique is that it is improper to define "anarchy" as the absence of property rights and then test its existsence by reference to some other quantity. But, a better definition of "anarchic production" takes into account the presence or absence of some exclusion beyond that created by property rights. A narrower definition gives rise to the possibility of "anarchic production" that is nevertheless extremely exclusionary--for example, under the narrow definition, a system without property rights that allowed only persons of a certain race to contribute would be expected to produce inherently superior products. This is facially problematic.

Property rights are relevant to the analytic proposition because they exclude potential participants by imposing non-trivial costs on them. Wikipedia's bureaucracy and rules have comparable exclusionary effects for similar reasons. While it is a legitimate question where the outer boundary of relevant exclusion sits, I argue that the exclusionary features discussed herein do not cross this line.

To begin, there is evidence of growing exclusion of non-prolific and new editors. During the global slowdown in the number of Wikipedia edits, which started in early 2007, the "middle class"; of editors (Wikipedians who make 2-999 edits per month), not high-frequency editors (Wikipedians who make 1000 or more edits per month), reduced its edits at the highest rates. More interestingly, the percentage of new edits reverted increased over the same period of time notwithstanding the drop in overall edits. Indeed, excluding vandalism-related and bot reverts, low-frequency or occasional editors experienced the greatest resistance--"since 2003, edits from occasional editors have been reverted in a higher rate than edits from prolific editors," and "this disparity of treatment . . . has been widening steadily over the years at the expense of low-frequency editors." Beyond these numbers, there are other indicators of growing resistance: the total number of blocked IP addresses and pages deleted increased during this time, as did the number of protected or semi-protected entries.

Though these trends could be unrelated to Wikipedia's bureaucratization, unequal content production and complex rules, there are reasons to believe the contrary.

Not only are editors a fairly homogonous group, which by itself suggests some exclusionary forces at play, but a small minority of Wikipedians make the bulk of site's edits and contribute the lion's share of site content (p. 276). Moreover, a small group of Wikipedia bureaucrats--usually prolific editors themselves--wield influential powers such as deleting articles, protecting pages from future edits and blocking IP addresses altogether. The result is a classic conflict of interest.

Editors who contribute the most have the greatest "skin in the game" and are highly motivated given the time and effort they devote to Wikipedia. But, these are also the people who have the technical know-how and bureaucratic power to impose non-trivial, exclusionary costs on new and infrequent participants. For example, an inexperienced user can contest the deletion of a new entry, but "debates about the merits of articles often drag on for weeks, draining energy and taking up far more space than the entries themselves. Such deliberations involve volleys of arcane internal acronyms and references to obscure policies and guidelines, such as . . . . The result is that novices can quickly get lost in Wikipedia's Kafkaesque bureaucracy."

Indeed, “deletionism” [link to Wikipedia] has become a cause célèbre for many prolific editors and administrators. In contrast to “inclusionists,” deletionists favor stricter standards for accepting entries and place greater importance on the “objective significance” of suggested additions to the encyclopedia. [Cite to Economist]. As Andrew Lih, a long-time editor and administrator explained after noticing the deletion of entries on the first ombudsperson for PBS and the now-defunct Pownce.com, “It’s as if there is a Soup Nazi culture now in Wikipedia. There are throngs of deletion happy users . . . tossing out customers and articles if they don’t comply to some new prickly hard-nosed standard.” [Cite to Lih].

Even if Suh et al.’s data suggest deletionists are winning the “battle for Wikipedia’s soul,” [Cite to Suh and Economist], it is important to discuss why this is the case.

First, deletionists have forced out a not insignificant number of prolific inclusionist-minded contributors who became increasingly discouraged by the shift in Wikipedia’s mentality. [Cite to Missing Wikipedians]. While the first order consequence here is the exclusion of these Wikipedians, the second order—and equally important—effect is depriving new and infrequent contributors of savvy Wikipedian allies in the fight against overzealous deletions.

Second, deletionists can leverage the proliferations of Wiki rules to amplify the costs new and infrequent users face. For instance, I recently edited the Wikipedia page for the Hobbs Act—as a tech-unsavvy Wikipedia novice, I found it difficult to understand how to properly cite and reference secondary sources, and I eventually resorted to citing cases as one would in a traditional legal brief. If my edits are deleted or challenged on this ground, much less a more complex one, I will have a difficult time adequately responding or adjusting my entry notwithstanding its substantive merits.

Thomas Hou noted in response to my solicitation on our Twiki that having one’s edits subsequently edited is a slight disincentive to future participation—this could be due to the costs in time, knowledge and energy it takes to contest the edits or deletion and the negative psychological feelings that accompany what one perceives as “unjust” edits. This disincentive is magnified, however, by an editorial process that unequally rejects the work of non-prolific contributors—as Wikipedia’s reputation shifts from egalitarian and open to deletionist and unequal, its credibility among potential and current non-prolific editors will erode.

Though Wikipedia content production is non-exclusionary in the sense that property rights do not determine who contributes, it is not without exclusionary features. While this Paper does not address whether this exclusion detracts from or enhances Wikipedia’s quality, it argues that, taken together, Wikipedia’s elaborate bureaucracy, unequal content production, increasingly complex rules and deletionist tendencies combine to raise the costs of participation for non-prolific and new contributors. This effect should at least give us pause before crediting Wikipedia’s anarchic roots with its qualitative superiority.

Wikipedia: Anarchy or Hierarchy?

I agree that it if I suggested Wikipedia has property rules, that was misleading (although it may be interesting to discuss, per Aaron's comment on my request for students' experiences w/ Wikipedia, whether contributors feel a sense of ownership in their edits and/or articles). I did not, however, operate on the assumption that Wikipedia (and other free software projects like it) exists without any organizational structure. Rather, my argument is that Wikipedia's organizational structure has exclusionary consequences that mirror those flowing from a regime with property rights. If a person is excluded, I'm not sure he or share cares whether property rights or organizational hurdles are to blame--the effect is the same. While I should have (and will be) more specific in my second draft, I don't think it's entirely irrational to argue that the phrase "anarchy" can suggest an absence of structural features other than property rights that exclude.

Your proposition is that Wikipedia is an inherently superior product because property rights do not determine who can produce there. But, property rights are only worth focusing on because, by removing them, access is open and contribution is potentially universal--in other words, we have anarchy. My argument is that we shouldn't be so quick to label Wikipedia anarchic when it has exclusionary features that undercut the very openness and universality that you admire. By way of analogy, we can define "healthy" as not doing crack cocaine because crack cocaine has certain negative effects on the body. This shouldn't preclude someone from questioning whether a person who does heroin, but not crack cocaine, is "healthy. "

Asking fellow students for their input based on their experiences with Wikipedia was a good suggestion, and I enjoyed reading the responses to my post requesting help. But, with such a small sample size, it's unlikely that these anecdotes provide the "hard proof" one way or another that you're looking for--even if every response came back "yes, I feel excluded and will never use Wikipedia again," a few burned contributors can't prove my argument. Indeed, I'm not sure what could "prove" my argument short of Wikipedia editors outing themselves as biased or Wikipedia itself shuttering its doors because too many people have left the site. I'm not, however, trying to come up with an airtight explanation for why Wikipedia is not what you claim. If I am mistaken and that is what I should be aiming for, I'm not sure this paper is the best vehicle for doing so. My goal is to explore something that "could" be true in the sense that there is a legitimate academic debate about just how open (or anarchic) Wikipedia is. I should do a better job of explaining why I think one side of this debate is correct--but, I don't think it's my job to provide incontrovertible truth of that fact.

But what would it take to turn this "may" into a "does?" It's a legitimate criticism that I need to provide some more robust support here, and I will do so in my second draft. I'm not sure, however, what I need to do to convince you. It is not my goal to test an unprovable theory so as to circumvent the need to support my argument with proof, logic, or reason. But, there are few things in this class--indeed, in this world--about which someone can say more than it "may" be true. It may be true that Zuckerberg has wrought more harm on this world than anyone his age; on the other hand, it may be true that, on balance, Facebook's benefits outweigh its costs. It may be true that politicians worldwide are in the back pocket of telecom/media kingpins and are more than willing to barter away our rights and freedom; it's also possible that, like companies in every other major industry, telecom and media companies jockey, with varying success, for political influence notwithstanding the negative effects this influence will have. It may be true the next presidential election will be determined by Iowa caucusmembers, or, more specifically, those caucusmembers whom the powers-at-be persuade to stay home; it's also possible that, like in 2008, 1992, 1988, 1980 and 1976, the Iowa caucus will not determine a party's eventual candidate for presidency. It may be true that Wikipedia bureaucrats, who not only contribute the most articles to Wikipedia, but make most of the edits on Wikipedia, will succumb to the human tendency to favor that which support's one's own views; it's also possible they remain entirely, unflinchingly objective in their work. In my second draft, I will try to better support my argument that the former, not the latter, is more likely. But, because it's just as unlikely that a Wikipedia editor will own up to his or her biases (of which he or she may not even be aware) as it is for a US congressman to admit his or her impropriety, I doubt I can render my paper entirely "may"-less.

But my speculation about how Wikipedia works is that you have a clear conflict of interest when the people making administrative decisions are the same people doing the heavy lifting in terms of content production. And, administrative decisions aren't just limited to editing but also encompass whether to "protect" "controversial" articles from any further edits or to allow a new entry to appear in the encyclopedia at all. I don't think anyone argues that the Wikipedia bureaucracy is made up of disinterested automatons--instead, Wikipedia bureaucrats have competing visions about what Wikipedia should be. So what's more absurd--arguing that these people can entirely separate their views/biases/beliefs from their administrative duties or arguing that these views/biases/beliefs influence administrative decisionmaking with exclusionary consequences?

I don't know if I can ever prove direct causation here--not only do I not have access to the relevant data, but even if I did, it's possible all I'd be able to show is a strong correlation. But, I can do a better job explaining why increased deletions of infrequent contributors' edit/entires, growing technological barriers to participation and the proliferation of Wiki rules have exclusionary consequences that likely contributed to this decline. I'm a little confused by how job loss could have resulted in editorial departure (I'm not saying it didn't, just that the causal link isn't immediately clear to me). If anything, I'd think an unemployed person has more time to sit at home and contribute to Wikipedia--indeed, participation in the Wikipedia community might serve as a replacement for the positive feelings of belonging and purpose that come with having a job. That is unless participating in Wikipedia is increasingly discouraging, in which case participation is like rubbing salt in the wound of an unemployed person.

But, education is not a costless process for the person interested in participating. For people with valuable information to contribute who are uninitiated in the technical terminology and maze of rules that increasingly define Wikipedia, the price of participation is steep (moreover, it becomes steeper as new rules/restrictions emerge because those already educated at a basic level are inherently more adept at navigating the new system). In my second draft I'm going to talk a bit about how Wikipedia is an increasingly difficult place to navigate for the tech-unsavvy (this explains why, by Jimmy Wales own admission, Wikipedia contributors are a fairly homogenous group--young, tech-savvy men).

I only think it's overly formalistic to focus exclusively on property rights without allowing for the possibility that other forms of exclusion can detract from WIkipedia's anarchism.

Why do people have to plan to impose their values on the organization? What if their values diverge over time? Moreover, are we to believe that donations never come with implicit strings attached? I don't dispute that people give to organizations like Wikimedia b/c they generally share the organization's values. Notwithstanding this concession, I don't think it's far-fetched to argue that conflicts of interest between Wikimedia and its benefactors could arise.

-- AustinKlar - 08 Dec 2011

More broadly, I think the "is Wikipedia anarchist"/"what is anarchism" issue cluster is somewhat orthogonal to what I take to be your main point. As I read it, your main interest is more like "has Wikpedia become too bureaucratized/hierarchical to do its job well?" That's a question that can be, in a straightforward manner, tested against evidence. I don't think you need to get into the definitional quagmire of whether it qualifies as anarchist or not.

Instead, I think what you would need to do is define some metrics and apply them. What is that Wikipedia should be doing? How good is it at doing that thing? Is there evidence that "X or Y added procedure" has decreased the ability of Wikipedia to do the things it should be doing?

-- DevinMcDougall - 06 Dec 2011

The premise is the problem. Did you think that free software projects don't have leadership, or that everyone's patches go in? That there are no property rules, thus no exclusion based on ownership, does not imply an absence of organization altogether. But unlike the State, which employs coercion to secure consent, anarchist institutions base their power on consent.

So by measuring the wrong quantity you get a problematic measurement. Yes, it requires organization to manage dozens of encyclopedias everyone can edit around the world. It requires organization to make the Linux kernel. In neither case do property rights either determine the structure or function of the organization, nor do they flow from organization's activity. What proposition are you testing: mine or a straw man's?

This is the reification of the false premise. The proposition you're supposed to be testing is that Wikipedia's superiority lies in the absence of property relations determining who can produce there. At least if you're testing any proposition I advanced. But now you have smuggled in some other question and are pretending it's the same.

You might want to do a little original research by talking to people who are Wikipedia editors. Even better would be to spend a little time involved yourself. Then you would see that you're confronting here one of the basic problems of reporting, ethnography, and legal investigation: factually accurate statements offered without context can constitute absurd misrepresentation. Here each of the statements you make could be correct (though the statistics are misleading and the quote from Jimmy is very far out of context), but the effect overall is not likely to sound like reality to anyone who actually lives in the Wikipedia community. The comments below show that with respect to marginal participants; you will find it also true if you talk to official community leaders, heavily-involved editors, or the academic outreach volunteers around you. Even talking to students who write for Wikipedia in one of my other courses might teach you what you need to know in order to interpret the data you offer, in line with the context that really exists.

The Wikipedia elite's control over content raises the specter of exclusion. Because Wikipedia bureaucrats are generally users who contribute and edit a disproportionately large amount of site content, administrators may preference content that is consistent with (or at least does not question) their own edits.

Do you have any evidence whatever to offer on this "may"? Or does it mean "I have no evidence whatever to offer, but I think I'll say this anyway because it conforms to my desired view of the universe?"

The 50% of edits that the 99% of users make must therefore survive the scrutiny of a distinctly self-interested group.

This "self-interest" of the self-interested group was established by the "may" in the previous sentence. That is, users' edits "must" survive the scrutiny of the self-interest that "may" exist. Which is nothing but pure fantasy masquerading as informed reporting. The fact, however, is that everyone's edits must survive everyone else's scrutiny. So the best questions would probably involve finding out how articles really develop. Because every page has a complete history one can read, as every page in this wiki saves all its versions, it's possible to look directly at the evidence left by editing. Why didn't you pick a few Wikipedia articles in areas of interest or intellectual specialization for you and actually assess the history of the editing? That would have taught you much less than actually involving yourself in the process of producing an article, but at least it would beat making it all up as you go along.

Even if administrators are entirely "objective" decisionmakers, the potential for and perception of bureaucratic abuse and/or bias may be sufficient to discourage participation.

Only, as commentators pointed out, unless it isn't. For there to be such discouragement, other people would have to take your speculation about how Wikipedia works seriously, instead of finding out for themselves how it works by interacting with it, in which case they are unlikely to reach your conclusion.

Whether the Wikipedia elite actually skew content development in favor of bureaucratic viewpoints and preferences may actually be a secondary issue because their mere existence reduces users' confidence in a meaningful, good-faith review process.

What? What are these "bureaucratic viewpoints"? Wikipedia's policies are explicit. The "neutral point of view" is the viewpoint required, and the test is citation of secondary (only secondary) sources reflecting the full span of published opinion on all controverted points. Do you have any evidence of this second-order process of discouragement of potential contributors or editors resulting from your hypothetical problem of some supposed (but evidenceless) tendency of high-involvement editors to adopt or favor viewpoints unpermitted by policy?

If users come to believe their edits will stand or fall not according to their merits, but rather according to the subjective preferences of the Wikipedia elite, it follows that participation will feel restricted--and users will be excluded--by virtue of Wikipedia's hierarchy.

And your evidence that this "coming to belief" occurs on the basis of these supposed subjective preferences of the editorial elite, for which in turn there hasn't been any evidence presented yet?

The effects of Wikipedia's bureaucratization go further, however, as they present potential editors with non-trivial costs. A 2009 Wall Street Journal article explained that 49,000 editors left Wikipedia in the first quarter of 2009--10 times more than left in the first quarter of 2008--because of the "plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe -- particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures."

Aside from the question of sourcing, would you have any evidence that the drop in editors was because of policy changes? (The actual size of the drop, in English, was approximately 12,000, from 90,000 to 78,000, rather than the larger and quite improbable number presented by the Journal. There were also declines in Wikipedias, like the German edition, in which the same policy changes were not made.) A significant source of editorial departure, Wikimedia found, was job loss, which was somewhat more common in the world during the first quarter of 2009 than the first quarter of 2008.

To the extent new editors must understand the Wikipedia power structure, conform to a Manual of Style, adhere to templates, contend with highly motivated and more technologically powerful users, and shape their content in a way that makes its removal and/or alteration less likely, participation in the Wikipedia community involves costs that may have the same exclusionary impact that traditional property rights effect.

Not, not the same. Different. Property rights effect either an absolute exclusion or an exclusion one can only overcome if one has enough money and pays it. These barriers to entry, on the other hand, can be lowered by a process called education. The Wikipedia community conducts a great deal of education, for free, designed to help people learn to use the Wikipedia effectively in all the ways you've mentioned. My students in AmLegalHist this term are working with an academic outreach editor at Wikipedia, learning how to overcome the obstacles you mention in order to make parts of their academic work in my class accessible to others through Wikipedia. You might want to talk to one of them.

In other words, where the absence of property rights opened the door to participation in the Wikipedia community, an increasingly complex set of rules governing participation may be having the opposite effect by placing the Wikipedia savvy at a clear advantage in the editing process vis-a-vis newcomers and technology novices.

This "may be having" is also a marker for evidenceless assertion.

While these barriers are not the result of a legal regime akin to copyright, their exclusionary consequences are nevertheless comparable to property rights'. It therefore seems overly formalistic to credit anarchism for Wikipedia's qualitative superiority on the ground that its exclusionary rules, while significant, are not products of property rights.

All of this to conclude that my argument, which was not based on words but on things, is formalist? This formalism of mine, if I understand you correctly, results from my failure to observe the phenomena for which you have no evidence, as a result of which I stated a possible general rule that accounted for all the observations except the ones you made up?

Finally, Wikipedia faces operational realities and, as a result, accepts donations from private (often corporate) entities in order to finance its operations. While these donors may not exert direct influence over Wikipedia, they nevertheless impose, indirectly, their expectations and values on the organization's leaders.

"Impose"? Are you serious? Do you think that people donate money to organizations like Wikimedia without sharing its values, planning to "impose" values on the organization? That's not reality so far as I know it, and I both run a non-profit and provide some informal advice to the Wikimedia leadership and board. In the world as I know it, people give to organizations such as Wikimedia because they already share its values.

To the extent Wikipedia relies on these entities, its content faces an outer limit of its benefactors' values and/or expectations. To stay within this limit, it seems inevitable that content will be excluded notwithstanding users' preferences.

What? Why would Wikimedia ever take a donation from someone who had a condition to exclude content? And why would it ever listen to a donor who tried to censor an article after donating? Do you think that the board, elected by the community and not appointed by leadership or (therefore) donors, would permit such an outcome? Yet this quite implausible outcome has become "inevitable" simply by the process of assertion without evidence. That doesn't meet minimum standards of intellectual responsibility.