WikiDemocracy

From Wikinfo

WikiDemocracy is the often messy and incomplete dynamics of producing content on wiki websites. "Democracy" refers to government by the people, thus, WikiDemocracy refers to the government of a wiki by its editors. In a WikiDemocracy, editors interact to establish decisions on content, how to resolve conflicts, move or delete pages, fight against spam and vandalism, and make other decisions for the community.

MeatballWiki

Consider, for example, MeatballWiki. The MeatballMission:

Politically, we are biased heavily towards democratic principles, even if we disagree (vehemently) what those are, which is nice in a way. Consequently, we are also an experiment to see how far we can take SoftSecurity before it breaks. While the simpler aspects of soft security are relatively well understood, we are learning painfully what it means to take these principles through an ever larger community. (as of 16 January 2006)

In fact, Meatball editors have spent much time in good debate over democracy. See for example VotingIsGood or VotingIsEvil, concerning whether people should use voting (polling) to make community decisions. Contexts range from the creation of Usenet groups to the election of the governments of Canada and United States.

Meatball was the first large wiki to use democratic principles, for example concerning their UseRealNames and CommunityExile pages. Both pages have flaws, and these and other policies lead to criticism from onlookers. Not everyone at Meatball uses real names, and the process of exile for an unwanted user is not simple.

Wikipedia

One Wikipedian example of WikiDemocracy is requests for deletion, widely used on Wikimedia "projects" to generate consensus on unwanted, non NPOV pages. This sometimes causes debate over whether to delete something, and so on. The situation compounds because Wikimedia hosts several competing and overlapping wikis, and there is a tendency for users to post at the wrong wiki. Another Wikipedian example is with the policy pages, which are debated and edited over time. As a result, Wikipedia has no shortage of detractors, proponents, and lively navel-gazing debates.

External Links

• M.R.M. Parrott, The Messiness of WikiDemocracy, rimric folio, Spring 2004.