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Organizing Democracy

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Organizing Democracy Emiel Rijshouwer Emiel Rijshouwer Uitnodiging Organizing Democracy Voor het bijwonen van de Power concentration and self-organizing bureaucratization openbare verdediging van mijn inin thethe evolutionevolution ofof WikipediaWikipedia proefschrift ORGANIZING DEMOCRACY Power concentration and self-organizing bureaucratization inin thethe evolutionevolution ofof WikipediaWikipedia Vrijdag 11 januari 2019 om 10:00 uur precies In de Forumzaal (M-gebouw) van de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam Burgemeester Oudlaan 50 3062 PA Rotterdam Aansluitend is er een receptie Organizing Democracy Organizing Democracy Organizing Emiel Rijshouwer [email protected] Paranimfen Clemens van Herwaarden Jeroen Thomassen Emiel Rijshouwer 526803-L-os-Rijshouwer Processed on: 7-12-2018 ORGANIZING DEMOCRACY Power concentration and self-organizing bureaucratization in the evolution of Wikipedia ORGANIZING DEMOCRACY Power concentration and self-organizing bureaucratization in the evolution of Wikipedia DE ORGANISATIE VAN EEN DEMOCRATISCHE ORGANISATIE Machtsconcentratie en zelforganiserende bureaucratisering in de evolutie van Wikipedia Thesis to obtain the degree of Doctor from the Erasmus University Rotterdam by command of the Rector Magnificus Prof. dr. R.C.M.E. Engels and in accordance with the decision of the Doctorate Board The public defense shall be held on Friday 11 January 2019 at 10:00 hours by Emiel Alexander Rijshouwer born in Rotterdam Doctoral committee Promotor: Prof.dr. J.L. Uitermark Other members: Prof.dr. D. Jemielniak Prof.dr. S.M.E. Wyatt Prof.dr. E.A. van Zoonen Copromotor: Dr. W. de Koster © 2019 Emiel Rijshouwer ISBN/EAN: 978-94-028-1317-3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements IX 1. Wikipedia: harbinger of a radically new form of organization? 1 2. Democratic organization in the age of the wiki 9 Organizing democracy: classical sociological theory 13 Development, politics and ‘the dark side’ of democratic 29 organization 3. Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, 1999-2017: 35 toward a sociological analysis The case 36 Data and methods 40 4. Increasing formal confinement of Wikipedia’s financial authority 51 From startup to nonprofit (1999-2003) 56 Emergence of financial structures in the nascent non-profit 61 (2003-2007) Centralization and financial control (2007-2017) 73 Bureaucratization to align projects with the WMF’s mission and to 91 forestall power concentration (2014-2017) Conclusion 104 5. Institutionalization of the production of Wikipedia’s 111 editing infrastructure Hacking wiki-software (1999-2003) 117 Formalization of developer-practices and −positions to meet 122 the challenges of Wikipedia’s growth (2003-2007) Centrally coordinated innovation to attract a larger and a more 132 diverse crowd of editors (2007-2014) Interventions to foster volunteer engagement (2014-2017) 145 From Toolserver to Tool Labs: centralization of a repository 155 of volunteer-developed algorithms (2005-2017) Conclusion 160 6. Coordinating culture: regulating volunteers in Wikipedia’s 167 distributed system Setting and challenging norms of participation (1999-2003) 171 Bottom-up bureaucratization to remain “in focus and in love” 180 (2003-2007) Diversity, retention, automation (2010-2017) 193 The WMF’s attempts to expand and to diversify its editor base 207 (2007-2017) Conclusion 215 7. Conclusion: self-organizing bureaucratization 223 Power concentration and power contestation 227 Ongoing bureaucratization 231 Self-organizing bureaucratization and democracy 237 Reflexivity and conservativeness 242 Glossary 247 References 257 Bibliography 258 Primary sources 264 Photo credits 283 Samenvatting 287 About the author 303 Throughout this dissertation I have quoted sources as they are originally written, unless indicated otherwise. I translated quotes from the interviews that were not conducted in English. 1. WIKIPEDIA: HARBINGER OF A RADICALLY NEW FORM OF ORGANIZATION? Organizing Democracy Founded in 2001, the publicly editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia is likely to be the most exhaustive and up-to-date repository of knowledge in the world. More than an online encyclopedia, it is a platform based on the wiki approach that encourages volunteers to edit pages of the website according to their own discretion, without any central authority and without the need for special software.1 In the past fifteen years, hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world have contributed their time and expertise to the project,2 and as a result Wikipedia is currently home to over 45 million articles. While Wikipedia started off in English, it is presently available in almost 300 languages. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization that runs the sites, reports that every hour 15,000 edits are made and that over 10,000 articles are added each day (2016a, 2017a). Since 2007, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” as it describes itself, has consistently ranked in the top ten most visited websites of the world, despite being the only non-profit and primarily volunteer-based organization of this list. Wikipedia’s massive success is as much in what it represents as a movement and platform as the information that it makes readily available. On the eve of its fifteenth anniversary, Wikipedia was awarded the Erasmus Prize by the Dutch Praemium Erasmianum Foundation based on Wikipedia being a community-based endeavor, “a shared project that involves tens of thousands of volunteers around the world who help shape this initiative.” (Praemium Erasmianum Foundation 2016:6). Many commentators and critics alike recognize Wikipedia as an exemplary model of an “open and self-organizing community”: it is “open” in the sense that anyone is, in principle, free to participate and “self-organizing” in the sense that neither market incentives nor formal commands are used to remunerate or direct participants to perform certain tasks. 1 In the case of Wikipedia, the platform is server-side software that allows pages to be edited by any public user. No other software is needed on the user-side except for a web browser. 2 Members of the jury and laureates of the Praemium Erasmianum qualify Wikipedia in similar terms (Praemium Erasmianum Foundation 2016). 2 Wikipedia: harbinger of a radically new form of organization? Its achievements make Wikipedia widely recognized as a prolific example of what is considered a revolutionary change in how groups of people are organizing. As Justus Uitermark argues, the wiki way of working serves as an ideal of successful organization that he deems applicable far beyond its online origins (2015). Uitermark cites as examples citizens engaging in coordinating their own care provisions, arranging their own energy and food production, and creating employment opportunities (2015). In each of these cases, people voluntarily partake in the production of common goods and services, based on their own concerns and their personal expertise, with the apparent consequence that “power invested in rigid institutions will be distributed across communities capable of taking control over their own affairs” (Uitermark 2015:2303). Authors writing on new forms of organization indicate how complex and adaptive democratic organizations emerge from the volunteer engagement of a leaderless crowd (cf. Ball 2004, 2012; Benkler 2006, 2011a; Castells, 2012; Himanen 2001; Johnson 2001, Raymond 1999; Shirky 2008; Tapscott and Williams [2006] 2008). Researchers commonly describe the accomplishments and the potential of such allegedly revolutionary organizations by contrasting them with archetypical classical organizations: the latter are portrayed as closed, rigid and hierarchical in order to emphasize the contrasting openness, spontaneity and self-motivated character of bottom-up organizations. As Kreiss, Finn and Turner aptly note, peer production is often defined in opposition to the bureaucratic structures that supposedly prefigure it (2011:244): If peer production offers flexibility and egalitarian interpersonal relations, bureaucracies seem to many to confront workers with rigid, hierarchical social relations. If bureaucracies hoard wealth and power, peer production distributes it. If bureaucracies breed psychologically divided ‘organization men,’ peer production supports the whole person. Above all, peer production promises to liberate the individual subjects 3 Organizing Democracy of mass consumer culture by fashioning them into active producers. Their point is that such a dichotomy is overly optimistic about the revolutionary potential of peer production. Following classical sociological theories it is conceivable ‒ or downright inevitable ‒ that such presumably revolutionary communities will eventually develop characteristics of the hierarchical and rigid bureaucracies that they are contrasted with. According to Robert Michels’s theory of the “iron law of oligarchy,” even initially democratic organizations will eventually develop into oligarchies in which a small group holds control and power. According to Max Weber’s theory of rational- legal domination, open and self-organizing communities necessarily develop into formal bureaucracies. Both theorists ultimately describe bureaucratization as an inevitable aspect of the maturation of initially open and self-organizing communities, and both point to the negative consequences of this tendency for the democratic potential of such organizations’ constituents. Michels predicts that constituents of initially democratic movements will be dominated by self-interested elites, and Weber warns of the inhumane aspects
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