Trusting Everybody to Work Together
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Wikipedia @ 20 Trusting Everybody to Work Together Pete Forsyth Published on: Jun 08, 2019 Updated on: Apr 27, 2020 Wikipedia @ 20 Trusting Everybody to Work Together I first embraced Wikipedia’s radical, open invitation to everybody to write an encyclopedia in 2006. Most other web platforms at that time featured restrictive permission schemes. Their software, policies, and culture sharply limited users’ ability to express their ideas. Wikipedia’s platform, by contrast, mostly stayed out of my way. I was free to explore my interests and share my knowledge. I quickly got to know and work with other people who shared my interests, without needing to seek permission first. The site’s documentation and policies encouraged me to use my own judgment and contribute what I felt was worthwhile; and its inner workings reinforced that ethos, enabling me to simply follow my own conscience and collaborate. Wikipedia’s creators eliminated the editorial bottleneck in traditional encyclopedia writing by using a flexible software platform that empowered contributors. But the original wiki software they had adopted in 2001 wasn’t fully up to the task. Key policies and software features had to be developed before Wikipedia could truly become “the encyclopedia anyone can edit”—that is, before “anyone” could come to include hundreds of thousands of people working in concert. Once implemented, those early improvements to the platform also benefited discerning readers, providing insights into the production process. This element—facilitating reader insight into writers’ actions and motivations— may at the time have seemed an ancillary benefit, secondary to the need to support a burgeoning community of writers and editors. But transparency to readers has become a key component of Wikipedia’s identity, and as Wikipedia’s star has risen, many of us have come to expect greater transparency from more traditional publications as well. Those building the early versions of Wikipedia’s software were guided more by instinct than by careful planning. Staff and volunteers deliberated individual features on the Wikipedia-L email list and on the wiki itself. Reading through those old messages, which are publicly archived, one gets to know a community in pursuit of a shared ideal, rather than a businesslike group pursuing a carefully planned strategic roadmap. The email list discussions are rife with aspirations and idealism, but they lack the kind of gravitas one might expect in the founding days of what would become one of the world’s top websites. Wikipedia’s earliest architects, both staff and volunteer, managed to construct a robust core of policies, procedures, and software that in many ways outstripped the projects planned out by the executives and investors of other major websites. Two decades into Wikipedia’s existence, the importance of some of the key software features introduced in those early days is not widely understood. As I’ll discuss, the early software of Wikipedia empowered writers and readers alike with a complete picture of the activities involved in producing the site’s content; but more recent changes to the software have at times eroded the completeness of information available to those users, seemingly with little appreciation for its significance. Maybe the early architects’ scorn for such norms as formal hypotheses, approval mechanisms, analysis of risk vs. opportunity, and detailed reports was a double-edged sword; it enabled them to accomplish incredible 2 Wikipedia @ 20 Trusting Everybody to Work Together things at an inflection point in the Internet’s evolution, but it did little to establish broad buy-in to a set of principles that could guide future efforts. Since there was no clearly-articulated central theory in the early days, we have little to go on in explaining how Wikipedia’s basic infrastructure has come to support so much generative collaboration. A clear understanding of Wikipedia’s early success would be of interest to Internet enthusiasts and historians, but it would have great practical value as well. Such an understanding should inform the kind of strategic vision and planning that a project of Wikipedia’s current scale requires. A theory explaining the unexpected success of Wikipedia could also inform other projects focused on organizing people around the globe to build an information commons. Other sites have tried and failed to replicate Wikipedia’s success, but have those efforts been driven by a fulsome understanding of why Wikipedia succeeded? In the absence of a clear, widely accepted theory, we should view definitive statements that Wikipedia’s success cannot be replicated with skepticism. We should hesitate to dismiss the possibility of other projects emulating Wikipedia’s success, and instead continue to ask basic questions, until we arrive at satisfactory answers. The appeal of transparency in a time of uncertainty By the time I started editing in earnest in 2006, the software and policy infrastructure I discuss in this essay was largely in place. Wikipedia was well known, and well on its way to mainstream acceptance. Its English edition had nearly a million articles. It was growing by every measure and would soon become one of the top 10 most visited sites in the world. The masses, however, had still not grasped Wikipedia’s grand gesture of trust, or the possibilities it opened up for writers everywhere to influence the way knowledge is shared. The openness that made Wikipedia possible also made it the butt of numerous jokes, from academia to late night television. The seemingly preposterous Wikipedia policy “Ignore All Rules” (IAR) held the same status as sensible policies like “Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia” and “Wikipedia is written from a Neutral Point of View.” An early formulation of IAR stated: “if rules make you nervous and depressed, then simply use common sense as you go about working on the encyclopedia.” Wikipedia dared to defy conventional wisdom, in order to magnanimously welcome the good faith of anyone and everyone. My own nervous depression, however, had nothing to do with Wikipedia’s rules. I worried about rules and traditions more broadly conceived. I worried that society’s vast collection of rules, both written and unwritten, might not provide a framework robust enough to bring about a peaceful, respectful, sustainable civilization. Because some crazy stuff was happening. 3 Wikipedia @ 20 Trusting Everybody to Work Together The early 2000s were defined, for me and for many others around the world, by the horrific attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, and by the political response to them. That day began with the inconceivable news that terrorists had hijacked multiple airplanes, and used them as weapons to kill thousands of civilians and strike at the heart of the country’s government and financial institutions. But this was just the first wave of attacks on civilized life: the U.S. government, in its various responses, seemed all too ready to sacrifice honesty, transparency, and civil liberties in the name of security, causing further institutional damage from within. In 2006, the U.S. Senate—a body often praised for its rigorous adherence to elaborate, time-tested rules ensuring rational and accountable decisions—passed a significant bill, the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. After the bill was signed into law, though, the public suddenly learned that last- minute changes to its text permitted the President to appoint prosecutors unilaterally. How could such significant changes be made in secret, especially for such a consequential bill? Who had made the changes? Amazingly, nobody seemed to know. News outlets initially reported that Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was responsible. But the senator disavowed all knowledge. Reporters took his denials at face value, even before any alternative theory emerged. I found this confusing. Eventually, we learned that the committee’s legal counsel had made the changes. This occurred without the senator’s knowledge, but under his authority. Who was responsible for the changes? When it came down to it...nobody was. Months later, President George W. Bush took advantage of the bill’s provisions; in so doing, he ignited a scandal around the politicization of the court system. Senators on the committee, however, professed to have been no more aware of the changes to the law than the public and the press. The opacity of the entire situation was baffling. Wasn’t this law, like all our laws, deliberated and passed in public view, and weren’t records carefully preserved? Didn’t legislators, or at least their staffs, know the first thing about using software, or any number of more traditional tools, to keep track of who made what changes? What was the point of a democratic system of government if a single, unelected person could slip a momentous provision into a law unnoticed? I longed for a system that did a better job of standing up for principles of transparency and accountability.1 I began dabbling with Wikipedia that same year. I didn’t realize it yet, but working on this platform would gradually restore my sense of hope that humans could self-organize to make the world a better place. The philosophy behind Wikipedia, as expressed through policies and software design, drew on many familiar traditions; but the site’s idiosyncratic take in longstanding concepts was new and refreshing. Wikipedia’s software, in contrast to the workings of our nominally democratic system of government, exposed data about who was making changes to what. As soon as a change was made, anybody on the 4 Wikipedia @ 20 Trusting Everybody to Work Together Internet could learn who (or at least, what user account) had taken action and exactly what he or she had done. On Wikipedia, one didn’t have to rely on civil servants or the press to make such information available; the information, by design and by reliable automated processes, was just a few clicks away.