Wikipedia: Anarchy or Hierarchy?

Introduction

This paper addresses whether Wikipedia confirms the "analytic proposition of central importance" that, for functional goods where MC=0, production without property rights--that is, anarchism--produces inherently superior products. Though Wikipedia fashions itself as an "open" community, Wikipedia is distinctly hierarchical. Not only does Wikipedia impose non-trivial costs on users that discourage participation in the Wikipedia community, it may also dissuade entry into the community in the first place. Moreover, Wikipedia is not simply an aggregation of information, but also an organization accountable to, among others, the private (often corporate) benefactors that make its non-profit project financially feasible. To the extent Wikipedia relies on these interested parties, its benefactors' expectations and preferences may exert influence over content development with exclusionary consequences. Although these aspects of Wikipedia do not necessarily undermine its qualitative superiority, they nevertheless offer reasons to question whether its qualitative superiority is a function of anarchism.

Wikipedia's Superiority: Should We Thank Anarchy?

"Anarchism" can have different meanings in different contexts, and this paper uses the term to describe the freedom from exclusionary rules and traditional systemic mechanisms for limiting the evolution (and therefore improvement) of a product. Although Wikipedia rejects the proposition that it is anarchistic, this is not dispositive. Instead, it is helpful to look at Wikipedia's power structure--and the barriers to openness embedded within it--to determine whether anarchism is responsible for Wikipedia's inherent superiority.

Far from a kumbaya-esque exchange of ideas, with large numbers of users' actions organically resulting in an equilibrium of "truth," Wikipedia is largely edited, monitored and developed by a minority of "volunteer administrators" who, although elected, wield a disproportionate amount of power over the site's content. Unlike most editors who quickly enter and leave the Wikipedia community, administrators are endowed with significant powers including deleting articles, locking pages to prevent further edits and even blocking individual users from editing any Wikipedia entry. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, admits that Wikipedia is maintained and monitored by what amounts to a Wiki elite: "A lot of people think of Wikipedia as being 10 million people each adding one sentence . . . . But really, the vast majority of the work this done by a small core community." Indeed, research suggests that content is largely determined by a small core of repeat players who are both familiar with and integrated into the Wikipedia bureaucracy, as roughly 1% of Wikipedia editors account for about 50% of edits to the site.

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. The 50% of edits that the 99% of users make must therefore survive the scrutiny of a distinctly self-interested group. Even if administrators are entirely "objective" decisionmakers, the potential for and perception of bureaucratic abuse and/or bias may be sufficient to discourage participation. 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. 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.

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." 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. In turn, Wikipedia's "organic" evolution may become increasingly "synthetic."

Conclusion

It is beyond the scope of this Paper to address whether Wikipedia is an inherently superior product and what, if not anarchism, accounts for that superiority. More simply, this Paper argues that while Wikipedia is not governed by property rights, it is not without exclusionary rules. Taken together, Wikipedia's hierarchical power structure and barriers to participation must, at least, call into question the anarchic roots of its qualitative superiority.

"Even assuming administrators are completely objective in their decisionmaking, the perception of and potential for bureaucratic abuse and/or bias may be sufficient to discourage participation. "

This is only true if you assume that the 99% who posts 50% of the content actually know the inner-workings of Wikipedia. I had no idea Wikipedia was structured that way so in making posts on wikipedia I've never felt any form of discouragement as a result of the structure. Further, I think that even if someone is aware that the structure is hierarchical, wouldn't it still make sense to post the information on the website anyway? Worst case scenario, it gets taken down or edited by the "wikipedia elite". But, isnt the possibility that it stays on the site worth putting it on there; I mean, it won't be on the site if you don't put it on there, so you may as well try to get it on there

-- AustinKlar - 25 Oct 2011

Perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between editorial vs. content generation. Aaron's analysis here suggests that while a small group of editors do make the bulk of edits, the majority of content is actually authored by occasional contributors with niche areas of expertise. It is my understanding that the extensive edits done by regular editors go more to style, format, sourcing, etc., than alteration of factual content. Of course, this editorial oversight may still afford them considerable power over the community. But in support of Austin's point, the editorial oversight has not discouraged me from making (admittedly infrequent) contributions to Wikipedia's more esoteric pages. Knowing I was being held accountable by a horde of scrupulous monitors only increased the neuroticism with which I included citations ...

-- CrystalMao - 28 Oct 2011

Crystal makes a good point, it is useful to distinguish between content and edits. The Slate article I link to explains (somewhat contrary to Aaron's analysis):

"Palo Alto Research Center's Ed Chi, the scientist who determined that 1 percent of Wikipedians author half of the content, told me he originally hypothesized that the site's most energetic editors were acting as custodians. Chi guessed that these users mostly cleaned up after the people who provided the bulk of the encyclopedia's facts. In reality, he found the opposite was true (PDF). People who've made more than 10,000 edits add nearly twice as many words to Wikipedia as they delete. By contrast, those who've made fewer than 100 edits are the only group that deletes more words than it adds. A small number of people are writing the articles, it seems, while less-frequent users are given the tasks of error correction and typo fixing."

This suggests that content is in fact authored by a small contingent of users while the vast majority of us do the less substantive "clean up" work (style, format, grammar, etc.).

I agree that Wikipedia's hierarchy doesn't have categorically exclusionary effects--to the extent it forces would-be contributors to conform to a higher standard, it results in a qualitatively superior product. But, the presence of the hierarchy surely excludes some potential users who are not willing and/or able to incur the costs (neurotically citing, for instance) that come with participation. Because Wikipedia has a hierarchy that, to an extent, discourages participation (or, at the very least, disproportionately encourages a certain type of informed, legitimate participation), it seems somewhat dubious to credit anarchism with its qualitative superiority.

-- MatthewLadner - 29 Oct 2011