User:MDP23/Community

This essay, no doubt long and rambling by the time I've finished it, is about my personal take on how the Wikipedia community can improve. I hope to be able to discuss its merits, downfalls, and possible solutions. Some users would hate my solutions, seeing them as conflicting with the whole premise on which they decided to start to contribute to Wikipedia; other users may agree with what I've said. I really don't know, so feel free to leave comments or even put your own viewpoint into the essay if you mark it as such clearly. On that note, let's begin.

The need for a community

First off, I'm going to say that Wikipedia needs a community. A community is needed to ensure that people can work together and resolve issues calmly and sensibly, and encourage new users to get involved. Also, as many admins especially will know, editing and maintaining this place can be a tiresome, depressing job to say the least, at times. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a place to go on Wikipedia to relax and chat about anything, or to form silly, but amusing groups. We have seen various incarnations of such areas or groups, most notably Esperanza, which collapsed under the weight of "excessive bureaucracy", and more recently I have seen some WikiProjects taking on the job of providing a space for their members to socialise. That said, many users are not active members of WikiProjects, thus this is useless and might encourage some sort a jealousy and the ever-feared MfD.

How is the current community structured?

As I write this, and probably for the forseeable future, we have three distinct (software defined) user groups (I am intentionally ignoring the "rollbacker" group, because is it does take off, all editors will be considerable members of it): Editor, Administrator and Bureaucrat. "Editor" can be split into a few further levels: anonymous user, new user and autoconfirmed user.

Despite numerous claims to the contrary, there really is no egalitarianism shown by admins and 'crats towards editors. The vast majority of elitism is shown by all user groups towards new users and anonymous users. These are the users who we need to encourage to edit, and perhaps get a few more users willing to do the menial copy-editing and maintenance jobs. Despite the fact that anybody who isn't either bitter about a previous RfA, or bitter towards all admins because of some previous action, will be able to see that the editor is as bad as the admin, the belief that there is an unfair caste system on Wikipedia remains. There is a very simple reason for this. Adminship is seen as a goal. Something to aspire to from the moment you discover RFA. Thus some editors will naturally see admins as some sort of superior being, while they are aspiring to be "up at that level". This is where, I believe, the route of the disquiet about the user-groups system comes from.

Outside of the user-groups idea, we have one group which is above us all: the Arbitration Committee. While primarily founded as a dispute resolution group at the top of the DR tree, it seems to be diversifying into some sorts of policy decision, or is at least being called upon to do so. Most recently, it has been proposed that ArbCom be asked to determine consensus on this issue of giving rollback privileges to non-sysops, following a community vote. While there is some opposition to this idea, it seems to be gaining steam - I will come back to my thoughts on it later.

Our approach to new users

Yes, we bite. We bite far too many new users. Just look at WP:MFD on any day and you will see a raft of user pages being proposed for deletion under some strange idea that Wikipedia is not Myspace. Well, I don't think anyone needs a policy or an over-zealous wannabe (or already) admin to tell them this this isn't Myspace. For the poor few who can't realise this, MfD is not any sort of answer, especially for new users who have been here but 10 minutes. We should remind them politely on their user page that Wikipedia is a place for writing an encyclopedia, not for chatting to friends, if they have done nothing useful for maybe half a week. Usually, these new users just get some notice on their talk page pointing them to MfD, and they leave, wondering why on earth this crackpot "community" is trying to delete them.

How can this be resolved? A stronger, more accepting, fairer, more laid back community. This top-10 website is more likely to collapse if we continue being so opposed to anything which "doesn't help to build the encyclopedia" (which is, in fact, a blanket term for anything that isn't a WikiProject, a noticeboard, a policy page or for anything that is friendly or that the nominator doesn't like the look of), as we continue to drive users away and fail to integrate new users.

Leadership

The Wikipedia article base is huge, and is growing at quite a staggering rate. Naturally, the edit rate is increasing similarly, and the user base - the active community - is increasing in size at a dramatic rate.

The power structure on Wikipedia is fairly simple in that there isn't one. Where decisions need to be made on difficult issues, either Jimbo or ArbCom are asked to take a look - both are usually as uninformed as each other, and both will be readily ignored and/or misquoted by people on both sides of the argument (and, indeed, in future arguments years away). We then have administrators who might end up holding things together at times, by closing XfDs, attempting to resolve simple user conflict issues, and more. all while being under constant scrutiny from some non-admins who will immediately cry cabal or call for desysopping if the slightest mistake is made (or, indeed, if they are disagreed with). Any user will be happy to respect an administrator until such a time as he or she starts to give credit to the other side's arguments.

Getting a bit philosophical here, does the community's ready willingness to worship Jimbo and agree with his and the ArbCom's decisions with some strong degree of conviction indicate a fundamental, if sub-concious, need for leadership? I think so. Wikipedia used to be relatively tiny in terms of user base, and the anarchistic, "anybody and everybody in charge", method worked just fine, without any excessive bureaucracy to tie down a project which really just needed to jump off the ground. Well, no one will argue with me that Wikipedia has flown since then, attracting users for all sorts of reasons. We still, however, retain the impractical idea that the community consensus should make decisions.

Let me use the example of the rollbacker policy. There was a discussion and vote which, it seems, yielded at 66% consensus with maybe 300 or 400 votes. So, it passed and the user group was added by a developer. Since then, the proverbial has hit the fan, as users who would otherwise have disagreed with the change discover a proposal that they hadn't seen and start kicking up a fuss about all manner of things: how the poll was run; how the results were interpreted; why their vote didn't count; how the consensus is clearly wrong. Eventually, you can get quite a consensus of users stating that the consensus is wrong - but who are they appealing to? Nobody, because there is no higher authority except perhaps Jimbo (who doesn't seem to like to get involved anyeay), who can decide such things. So, ArbCom have been mandated to sort things out. While many users are okay with this, others dislike the idea of ArbCom creating policy. After all, it is slightly dodgy for the law makers to also be the judges, juries and executioners.

My feeling is that we should take the step now to introduce the bureaucracy quickly and smoothly to provide us with a real leadership and governance system. More coming soon...