Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the collectively produced open encyclopedia, which has become the flagship of peer production in the knowledge field.

Aims of Wikipedia

Co-founder Jimmy Wales on the ambitious aims of Wikipedia

"One of the most important things to know about Wikipedia is that it is free to license and that the free license enables other people to freely copy, redistribute, modify our work both commercially and non-commercially. We are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and we've been around since January 2001, so that's about four years ago. The Wikimedia Foundation is our non-profit organization that I founded about a year and a half ago and transferred all the assets into the foundation, so the foundation actually manages the website and runs everything. The mission statement of the foundation is to distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. And we really mean that because every single person on the planet, this includes a lot more than just a cool website." (Jimmy Wales lecture at Stanford University, 2-9-2005, quoted by Howard Rheingold on the SmartMob blog)

Governance of Wikipedia

See also: Wikimedia Foundation which has a subsection on the Transparency of the Foundation's governance.

Principles

As described by Eric Olin Wright:

"Wikipedia’s fundamental principles of organization are not simply non-capitalist; they are thoroughly anti-capitalist:

1. Nonmarket relations:

Voluntary, unpaid contributions and free access. No one is paid to write entries in Wikipedia and even much technical work on the software infrastructure of Wikipedia is done on a volunteer basis. No one is charged to gain access to its millions of entries: it is free to anyone in the world who can get access to an internet connection. There are no advertisements on the pages of Wikipedia. No one makes a profit directly from its activities. The financial resources needed to underwrite the hardware of the system and pay the limited staff needed for some technical functions is provided by the Wikimedia Foundation which is largely funded by contributions from the wiki community.

2. Full, Open, Egalitarian Participation.

Wikipedia gives full editing rights to anyone who wishes to join in the production and transformation of content. Anyone can be an editor and no editors have special privileges over others in the production of content. A PhD and a well-read high school student are on formally equal footing. The editorial process thus functions in a dramatically different way from conventional editorial processes that rely heavily on experts with credentials. While it is impossible from the available Wikipedia statistics to know how many different people have contributed to the editing process, in December 2008 there were 157, 360 “active accounts”, meaning accounts which had done at least one edit in the previous month.

3. Direct and Deliberative interactions among contributors.

Wikipedia contributions and decision-making are generally done directly by editors in a deliberative process with other editors without mediation by any body that has editorial or managerial control. Wikipedia articles tend to display a certain life-cycle, beginning as a “stub” (the wiki-term for a minimalist entry that has not yet “matured” into the normal structure of a Wikipedia article), then growing to a proper article with an increasing rate of edits which eventually converges on some equilibrium in which the article either remains largely static and “complete” or undergoes only minor editing. This process is often accompanied by considerable back and forth discussion among editors, which is recorded in a discussion page linked to a given entry.

It is thus possible to review the entire history of the writing and discussion in the editing process of Wikipedia entries. The mass collaborative effort of article authorship is a slow process of consensus formation. On average, entries in the English Wikipedia have nearly 90 saved revisions per article.

4. Democratic governance and adjudication.

At its inception, all Wikipedians were essentially editorial administrators (called “sysops”) but as vandalism and other mischief intensified with the growing notoriety of the encyclopedia, a kind of quasi-administrative structure was instituted which enable users to acquire different levels of organizational responsibility and roles in adjudicating conflicts. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the development of Wikipedia as a real utopian institutional design: the emergence and evolution of mechanisms of social control and adjudication suitable for such a freewheeling network structure.

There are currently four basic administrative levels of users: editors, administrators, bureaucrats, and stewards. As of mid-2008 there were about 1600 administrators, 31 bureaucrats and 36 stewards. The administrative privileges associated with these designations, however, remain focused on facilitating “cleaning” the encyclopedia; they do not confer privileges in the production of Wikipedia content. Here is how Wikipedia describes administrators, the basic level of this administrative structure above ordinary editors: “Administrators, commonly known as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are Wikipedia editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance.” As described in the Wikipedia website that discusses administrative procedures, “English Wikipedia practice is to grant administrator status to anyone who has been an active and regular Wikipedia contributor for at least a few months, is familiar with and respects Wikipedia policy, and who has gained the trust of the community, as demonstrated through the Requests for adminship process.11 Among other technical abilities, administrators can protect and delete pages, block other editors, and undo these actions as well. These privileges are granted indefinitely, and are only removed upon request or under circumstances involving high-level intervention (see administrator abuse below). Administrators undertake additional responsibilities on a voluntary basis, and are not employees of the Wikimedia Foundation.”

Access to these administrative roles is gained through democratic means. The process, as described on the page in Wikipedia discussing “Requests for Adminship”, stresses the open, consensus-seeking character of the process:

- Any user may nominate another user with an account. Self-nominations are permitted. If you are unsure about nominating yourself for adminship, you may wish to consult admin coaching first, so as to get an idea of what the community might think of your request. Also, you might explore adoption by a more experienced user to gain experience. Nominations remain posted for seven days from the time the nomination is posted on this page, during which time users give their opinions, ask questions, and make comments. This discussion process is not a vote (it is sometimes referred to as a !vote using the computer science negation symbol). At the end of that period, a bureaucrat will review the discussion to see whether there is a consensus for promotion. This is sometimes difficult to ascertain, and is not a numerical measurement, but as a general descriptive rule of thumb most of those above ~80% approval pass, most of those below ~70% fail, and the area between is subject to bureaucratic discretion….. Any Wikipedian with an account is welcome to comment in the Support, Oppose, and Neutral sections. The candidate may respond to the comments of others. Certain comments may be discounted if there are suspicions of fraud; these may be the contributions of very new editors, sockpuppets, and meatpuppets13. Please explain your opinion by including a short explanation of your reasoning. Your input will carry more weight if it is accompanied by supporting evidence.

Selection procedures to other levels of the hierarchy have somewhat different rules, but they all involve open democratic processes.

One of the key roles for these different levels of administrators is resolving conflicts.

There are, of course, topics in which there is considerable disagreement among editors over content. Sometimes this makes it difficult for an entry to converge on a consensus text. There are also instances of malicious vandalism of Wikipedia entries. Wikipedia urges the resolution of disagreement between editors on the basis of open communication and users have written numerous guides and essays offering instruction and advice to this end.16 Most evidence indicates that warring between editors is rare relative to the total number of editors and vast amount of content over which disagreement may arise. Yet, disputes do arise and when the editors fail to resolve the issues themselves, a neutral administrator may be called in to manage the conflict through negotiation, mediation, and arbitration – all processes that emphasize the empowerment of aggrieved parties, consensus, and mutually beneficial outcomes. If disputes remain unresolved, then a series of escalating interventions become available. A dispute may be referred to formal mediation and finally to arbitration. The Arbitration Committee, which was formed in early 2004, is the mechanism of last resort for dispute resolution and is the only body that can impose a decision, including sanctions, against users. The members of the Arbitration Committee are appointed by Jimmy Wales on the basis of advisory elections by the broader Wikipedia community. At this ultimate level of control, the Wikipedia process contains a residual, if nevertheless important, element of undemocratic power.

Taken together these four characteristics of Wikipedia – nonmarket relations, egalitarian participation, deliberative interactions among contributors, democratic governance and adjudication – conform closely to the normative ideals of radical democratic egalitarianism. What is remarkable is that these principles have underwritten the collaboration of tens of thousands of people across the world in the production of a massive global resource." (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU_files/ERU-CHAPTER-7-final.pdf)

History

"Wikipedia is a popular online, collaboratively written, free content encyclopedia initiated in 2000. Like code, Wikipedia has a modular structure, in this case composed of encyclopedia articles. This structure enables parallel development along a multitude of specializations. The modules are iteratively written, peer–reviewed, and together reflect the consensus of collective intelligence through individual transactions.

The Wikipedia project leverages open source wiki software to both organize content and participation. This platform enables an accessible, networked connection between the project and geographically distributed participants. The wiki platform provides participants with tools and a place to work. It also structures the nature of the work.

Ward Cunningham built the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, in 1995 to host the Portland Pattern Repository, a collection of problem and solution archetypes for computer programming (Cunningham). Cunningham’s design supports social, political and conceptual phenomena conducive to successive, distributed collaborative projects. Wiki-wiki is a Hawaiian term meaning quick and easy. Wikis impose a minimal barrier to participation through a simple text markup system and uploads which do not require server login.

Wikis support a mesh network of hyperlinked modules of content. Each module contains two additional layers for module history and discussion specific to the module’s content. This structure is important. The history layer of the module serves as a versioning system that records iterations and can be used to revert the module to an earlier, perhaps more stable, state. The discussion layer facilitates open and transparent negotiation of consensus about content, allowing contributors to voice their opinions and sometimes assert their identities without affecting the content layer. Because the discussion layer is part of a content module, discussion stays on topic. Both the history and discussion layers form the institutional history of a project, making decisions and protocol transparent.

Openness and transparency are central to the functioning of the Wikipedia project. As a matter of Wikipedia policy, anyone, including an anonymous user, is permitted to directly edit any module on any subject. Wikipedia participants, like free and open source software hackers, are personally motivated to contribute. Participation is voluntary and is the sole condition for membership in the community. Instead of going through a moderation process, contributions become immediately visible on the site, providing immediate satisfaction for participants. Ownership of the work is distributed throughout the community. Contributor names do not appear on entries, although discussion and history layer entries are typically signed with user names.

Contributions are recorded in the history section of a module. They are peer-reviewed and either contribute directly to an iteration of an entry, are modified or are deleted. Reviewers debug edits according to consensus recorded on the discussion layer of each module. Because the discussion layers are the only forum for dialog (a benefit of geographically distributed, asynchronous, networked collaboration on a dedicated platform), discussion is open to all participants and decision–making is transparent.

Transparency is important to the success of Wikipedia because it allows participants to understand the reasoning behind decisions, contributing to trust in the Wikipedia process. It also allows newbies a means to understand informal community protocol and culture, as well as reduce abusive practice. While formal procedures exist to limit members who violate project mores, these measures are rarely necessary. Peer pressure typically regulates behaviour before administrative actions are needed. Participants self–manage and are usually not subjected to organizational authority.

Openness and transparency contribute to the success of the project in additional ways. Schlock and chaos are avoided due to the watchful eyes of the many, exemplifying Linus’ Law, coined and articulated by hacker Eric Raymond as “Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow? (Raymond, 2000). As anyone can edit Wikipedia, vandalism does occur. On the other hand, because anyone can edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia is robust. IBM’s Collaborative User Experience Research Group found that most Wikpedia pages have been vandalized. These researchers also found that most pages were repaired through version rollback using the module histories so quickly that most users would never see the effects (IBM). This phenomenon is called soft security in the free software, open source and wiki communities.

Wikipedia is not owned by any individual or group. The content of Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Document License (GFDL), the open content counterpart to the GNU General Public License (Stallman, 1991). On a fundamental level, participants edit on equal footing; however administrative roles are granted by peers to participants who exhibit competence, trustworthiness and dedication to the project ( Meta–Wiki, “Power structure?). This system creates a bottom–up hierarchical structure based upon merit.

Successful open source communities develop hybrid political structures similar to both an open cathedral and a bazaar. Wikipedia Sysops are elected by the community and are able to delete pages and block users. Wikipedia Bureaucrats set Sysop priviledges. Stewards are multi–project Bureaucrats. Board members are elected through a popular vote of active members and have jurisdiction over policy and project stewardship. This bottom–up hierarchical structure is similar to the structures created to administer module oversight in free software and open source code projects. It is noteworthy to mention that Wikipedia has various related wikis, some which support organizational and institutional needs and some which are parallel or related projects.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is acknowledged by the community as the project’s benevolent dictator. Like Linus Torvalds, he reserves the right to unilaterally make decisions. In practice, he rarely exercises this right ( Meta–Wiki, “Power structure?). Benevolent dictators must keep the project alive while not becoming autocratic or infringing on the community-wide sense of project ownership.

Typically benevolent dictators are founders of the project and have put considerable energy into creating the initial version. Open source collaboration works well to iterate and grow a project, but originating a project using open source methods is difficult. Founders and early adopters are important in establishing the foundational mores of the community. Much of Wikipedia policy developed from Wales’ desire to create “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge? ( Meta–Wiki, “Foundation issues?).

The benevolent dictator’s power is held in check by the right to fork, guaranteed through the GFDL. All participants are volunteers and can leave the project at any time, taking the project with them if they chose. The Wikipedia platform and content database are available for download. As a consequence, a benevolent dictator only retains the position as long as he or she is trusted. Project forks can also occur when foundational attributes falter, fade, or no longer apply." (http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_6/coffin/)

Conflict Arbitration

Interview of Jonathan Hochman by Tisch Shute:

"One of the things I did was to try and clear people out who were being disruptive. We actually had to go to arbitration over that article. It is like the supreme court of Wikipedia. There is a panel of 15 arbitrators. They hear the case. There is evidence, arguments and decisions. It is really like a simulated law suit. You get all the experience of a simulated law suit with the real threat that you could be banned. If they don’t like what you are doing they can actually ban you or restrict you from topics.

So it is really fascinating how this social space Wikipedia becomes a very real platform though it is in a virtual world for real world disputes. Most disputes are over the definition of things. If you have a you suit most disputes are about how things are defined. And Wikipedia has become the defacto definition of things in the real world. People want to know what are “The Troubles.” If you go to Wikipedia you find out The Troubles are a dispute over Northern Ireland. What the article says has a profound impact on public opinion.

Tish: So who is on the court of Wikipedia?

Jonathan: They are volunteers. these people work two or three hours a day to run this court. There are all kinds of projects. There is a WikiProject Spam which has people who can write computer programs to statistically analyze Wikipedia projects - not only Wikipedia. But all of them are looking at the links and reporting them and banning those people who are abusing or gaming the system.

Tish: You were on the Stopping Virtual Blight Panel at Web 2.0 Summit - what are the most important things to think about on this topic?

Jonathan: Yes we were talking about how to defend the web against virtual blight. The thing I find interesting about Wikipedia is that because it is the eighth largest web site and possibly the second largest web site comprised of user generated content after YouTube. The problems that exist in Wikipedia are larger and more detailed than any other site. For whatever problem someone has for their social media site or their Web 2.0 site these problems already exist in Wikipedia and the solutions are there and they are transparent. You can actually see the history of what’s been done.

If there is, for example, a problem on Digg - some problem with sock puppetry or vote stacking - it happens, it goes away. You don’t get full disclosure. With Wikipedia you can actually go in and look at a dispute and watch it unfold. You can watch the arbitration cases that are filed, the arguments, the decisions, the logic, the rationale. You can see the successes and the failures and the different things people have tried to control blight. For example, we tried to resolve this dispute one way but it was a disaster, so we have tried something else and that worked." (http://www.ugotrade.com/2008/12/29/hacking-the-world-in-2009-google-street-view-smart-stuff-and-wikiculture/)

User typology as related to governance

Forte and Bruckman (2008, pp. 3-4) identify three main identities that a user may have:

Unregistered users can exert little individual influence in shaping policy and establishing norms, but en masse they represent an important part of the context in which day-to-day operations take place. In most cases, unregistered users have the ability to edit the encyclopedia freely but…their ability to influence content is weaker than registered users.

Registered Users includes everybody else on the site…Registered users may also hold various technical powers…[they] often self-select into formal and informal subgroups along ideological, functional, and content-related lines… Ideological groups are much like political parties whose affiliates hold a set of common beliefs about the way the community should function and what its goals should be. Examples of stable ideological groups include deletionists, who are committed to very strict guidelines on what constitutes encyclopedic topics, and inclusionists, who are committed to the idea that an online encyclopedia need not and must not exclude information.

The Arbitration Committee wields considerable influence in the community. The Arbitration Committee (Arb Com)…appears to often serve as a more general decision-making body for the English language site. Arb Com was initially charged with interpreting policy and making binding resolutions in the case of interpersonal disputes…Committee members are selected through a hybrid process of election by the community and appointment by Jimmy Wales…Committee action can play a role in influencing both policy and content."

Source: Forte, A., and Bruckman, A. (2008) “Scaling Consensus: Increasing Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance”, Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on System Sciences, Hawai: HICSS, 157.

Research

On the governance structure of Wikipedia, see

1. Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, and Matthew M. McKeon, “The Hidden Order of Wikipedia,” Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research, <http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/papers/hidden_order_wikipedia.pdf>, and
2. Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman, “Scaling Consensus: Increasing Decentralization in Wikipedia Governance,” Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2008, <http://csdl.computer.org/plugins/dl/pdf/proceedings/hicss/2008/3075/00/30750157.pdf?template=1&loginState=1&userData=anonymous-IP1223136700127>.
3. Bauwens, M. (2008b) “Is Something Fundamentally Wrong with Wikipedia Governance Processes?”, P2P Foundation blog at http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-something-fundamentally-wrong-withwikipedia-governance-processes/2008/01/07 (retrieved 14 October 2008).
4. Butler, B., Joyce, E., and Pike, J. (2008) “Don’t Look Now, But We’ve Created a Bureaucracy: The Nature and Roles of Policies and Rules in Wikipedia”, CHI Proceedings, 2008, Florence: CHI.
5. Economist, The (2008) “The Battle for Wikipedia’s Soul”,at http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10789354&logout=Y (retrieved 24 January 2009).
6. Helm, B. (2005) “Wikipedia: A Work in Progress”, Business Week at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051214_441708.htm?chan=db (retrieved 20 January 2009).
7. Loubser, M., and den Besten, M. (2008) “Wikipedia Admins and Templates: The Organizational Capabilities of a Peer Production Effort“, Creating Value through Digital Commons, European Academy of Management, Ljubljana and Bled, 14-17 May.
8. Riehle, D. (2006) “How and Why Wikipedia Works: An Interview with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko”, International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '06).
9. Rosenzweig, R. (2006) “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past’’, The Journal of American History, 93(1).
10. Spek, S., Postma, E., and van den Herik, H.J. (2006) “Wikipedia: Organisation from a bottum-up approach“, International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym '06).
11. Viegas, F., Wattenberg, M., and McKeon, M. (2007) “The Hidden Order of Wikipedia“, Proceedings of HCII International, Beijing: HCI.

Internal Wikipedia articles:

1. Wikipedia (2009) “Criticism of Wikipedia” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia (retrieved 23 January 2009)
2. Wikipedia (2009) “Deletionism and Inclusionism in Wikipedia”, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia (retrieved 25 January 2009)
3. Wikipedia (2009) “Essjay Controversy” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy (retrieved 23 January 2009)
4. Wikipedia (2009) “Talk: Deletionism and Inclusionism in Wikipedia”, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Deletionism_and_inclusionism_in_Wikipedia#COI.2FSYN (retrieved 25 January 2009)
5. Wikipedia, “Wikipedia:Protection policy”, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy (retrieved 25 October 2008)
6. Wikipedia (2009) “Wikitruth” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitruth retrieved 24 January 2009)

Wikipedia-critical sites:

1. Wikipedia Review, The (2008) ”Criticisms of Wikipedia: A Compendium” at http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20080104/criticisms-of-wikipedia/ (retrieved 30 October 2008)
2. Wikipedia Review, The (2008) “Discussion” at http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=14292 (retrieved 11 November 2008)
3. Wikimedia (2008) “Power Structure” at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Power_structure (retrieved 25 October 2008)

Status Reports

2007

Andrew Lih, on the situation after September 2006:

"A new board was put in place almost the exact same time while multiple staff reshuffles have taken place. Certainly a new style of oversight and leadership has taken hold. The board is larger than its ever been, and is very much an operational, hands-on entity. Gone are the days of grassroots informality. Elected folks are now delegated with authority and a six figure budget. Formal “chapters” with leaders dominate the community organizing efforts." (http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/06/28/wikipedia-plateau/)

2008

"Ed Chi of the Palo Alto Research Center is the creator of WikiDashboard, a social dynamic analysis tool created independently of the foundation that allows readers to analyze all of the edits made by their peers. In October, Chi discovered a huge drop-off in the number of edits, to the point that 1 percent of editors were editing 50 percent of the content. While Wikipedia remains strong in page views and overall ranking, Chi said the waning interest among editors does not bode well for the site or community.

"The edits have leveled off and remained steady," Chi said. "We don't yet know a reason for the decline, but we suspect it is due not to the wisdom of crowds but to the increased level of conflict among community members. Often it is not the one with the right answer who has their say, but the one who sticks around the longest and is best able to argue his case." (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/24/MNIJ12ETP4.DTL)

2009

Details on the number of volunteers, by Jonathan Hochman:

"How many Wikipedia volunteers are there now?

Jonathan: Think of a Venn Diagram - a big circle. The total number of contributors are about one million different people that contribute. But there are probably about 5,000 active editors that are consistently and regularly contributing. And within that kernel there are fifteen hundred people that have administrator access and probably only eight hundred of them are active. People have a natural life span with the community. People come an typically stay for 6 months to 3 years. Usually after that they become bored, disillusioned or get into a conflict with someone. There is a natural tendency for people to stay for a while and move on. Some people stay longer, a few, but the majority will move on at some point. So it is a lot of fresh faces moving in." (http://www.ugotrade.com/2008/12/29/hacking-the-world-in-2009-google-street-view-smart-stuff-and-wikiculture/)

UNU Merit Survey

Data summary:

"From late October to early November 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation and UNU-Merit conducted the first multilingual survey of Wikipedia readers and contributors in 20 languages. In total, more than 130,000 Wikipedia readers and contributors completed the extensive survey questionnaire:

1. 65% of respondents self-described as readers, and 35% as (mostly occasional) contributors. Former contributors are analysed separately.
2. Respondents came from over 200 countries, ranging from 10 to 85 years completed the survey; their average age is 26 years, and 25% of the respondents are younger than 18 years. Female respondents are a bit younger than the average (24 years)
3. Among these, readers and contributors are on average in their mid-twenties, and predominantly male (75%)
4. Women, with a share of 25% in all respondents, are more strongly represented among readers (32%) and less strongly represented among contributors (13%).
5. Both educational levels and age are slightly higher among contributors than among readers.
6. Regarding their motivations to contribute, respondents mentioned as their top two reasons that (1) they liked the idea of sharing knowledge, and (2) that they had come across an error and wanted to fix it.
7. The concern that they might not have enough information to contribute is the main reason holding back potential contributors, mentioned by 51% of this group. Fourty-eight percent mentioned they were happy readers of Wikipedia, and saw no reason to get involved as contributors.
8. The most common reason why respondents have not donated money to the Wikimedia Foundation, mentioned by more than 42% of respondents, is that they don’t know how."

(http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/16/first-preliminary-results-from-unu-merit-survey-of-wikipedia-readers-and-contributors-available/)

Why Wikipedia is Out-cooperating its rivals?

Cooperation expert Christopher Spehr:

Citation 1

"The Encyclopaedia Brittanica editors are out-cooperated because the Wikipedia authors work for free. But this is partly an illusion, because the Wikipedia authors have to eat and dress and live in houses too. Only they get paid by other structures, outside the Wikipedia collaboration, not by the project itself. So we do not know, so far, which form of collaboration is more productive. The costs of Wikipedia are hidden, they are externalized. Whoever can externalize its costs, wins – that’s a basic rule in capitalism, and that’s why ecological movements always claim the internalization of costs. The reason Wikipedia is really more productive is because it does not have to spend work, money etc. into means of forcing people to work, because editorial work is spread among all participants and not located in a fixed editors’ class, because the roles of producer and consumer get blurred, because a strong responsibility of the worker for his or her work is established, etc." (http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire-exchange-with-christoph-spehr/)

Citation 2

"GL: Is it productivity that counts? Ultimately a new system will win against the existing system, just because it’s more productive?

CS: Yes, I think so. More productive, not more efficient. Usually, a new way of production, and a new society linked to it, is successful because it can accomplish something the old way of production (and the old social structures linked to it) could not. Machines, weapons, ideologies, structures of environmental control, intelligent machines, you name it. It is not successful because it is more cost-efficient. If something really new, really useful, really powerful can be accomplished, costs really don’t matter. That’s a very important historical lesson. So the question is: what is it about the new modes of production, as they emerge today, that enables them to accomplish things the old ones could not? It’s not that Wikipedia authors work for free. That’s not the point. But maybe it is Wikipedia indeed. And what’s related to it. Maybe it’s the astonishing productivity of free cooperation in such forms. That would be the new forces of production, and the new relations of production would be that of free basic income, personally free labour and shared means of production.

So what is it that new cooperations, like Wikipedia, can produce that older forms of cooperation could not? Wikipedia, using the tool of the wiki and the knowledge of online community building, creates a product that is completely up-to-date, that is mistake-free, error-free, while it works in extremely error-friendly ways at the same time. It is quite unbiased in terms of cultural hegemony, it is strongest when it comes to entries other encyclopaedias wouldn’t even have. You may find better articles elsewhere, more to your gusto, but usually ideology is kept checked, balanced, controlled in Wikipedia. If you want it unbiased, you go there." (http://www.networkcultures.org/geert/out-cooperating-the-empire-exchange-with-christoph-spehr/)

Discussion

See our new page on Wikipedia Controversies

Business Aspects

Mark Choate:

"Wikipedia is a living example of how network effects can confer sustainable competitive advantage in a market mediated by an open platform even though Wikipedia (on the surface) does not seem to act in accordance with the resource-based view of sustained competitive advantage.

The editing process taking place at Wikipedia is transparent. Not only can just about anyone participate, but the history of all the edits and who made them is available. At the same time, Wikipedia makes available all of its content. You can download every article and photograph and import it into your very own Wikipedia clone if you would like to.

Given the transparency of the process and the easy transferrability of resources, once might conclude that Wikipedia does not have a sustainable competitive advantage in the online encyclopedia market. One would be wrong, however.

While I can replicate the content on Wikipedia, I can never replicate the overall value of Wikipedia, for two reasons. The first is that there is a network of users who regularly monitor and update Wikipedia articles and they will continue to do so on Wikipedia's site, and not mine. Of course, I can continue to copy Wikipedia's content and maintain a site very close to the original, but with a slight delay and a modest degradation in quality. Even if I were able to make the transfer all but instantaneous, I still will not have replicated the value of Wikipedia because I also need to consider all the other sites on the Internet that link to Wikipedia as well.

It is the degree to which Wikipedia is entrenched in the network itself, the degree to which it is woven into the web that provides its greatest competitive advantage and one that, I suspect at least, will prove to be sustainable because that network is difficult to replicate. Clearly, network effects are still relevant, even with an open platform. The technology is readily replicable and the process by which the content was produce is entirely transparent. As it turns out, it is the weave of the data as woven into the network itself that is nearly impossible to replicate. Much in accordance with the old resource-based view of sustained competitive advantage, Wikipedia has secured it by making the value of its offering very hard to imitate." (http://www.cutter.com/offers/enterprise2.html.)

Details on the 2008 budget and governance structure at http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/should-wikimedia-cost-that-much/

More Information

1. Wikipedia.org: The pro's and cons of Wikipedia (vs. traditional encyclopedia production) are discussed in this article: http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=57
2. This paper explores the character of “mutual aid? and interdependent decision making within the Wikipedia at http://reagle.org/joseph/2004/agree/wikip-agree.html
3. A profile of the most prolific contributors and the values driving them, at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66814,00.html?
4. This review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, has interesting comments on deletionism, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131