I have never made my identity as a real person secret, and with that, I would like to share a project that I am working on. This comes from an American perspective, an analytical one, but I would like to share it here (albeit I have been absent from this site).

It's a bore. A dry read. However, given my profession it seemed to have crossed over, so if any are willing, please give it a read, and don't hold back. It is finalized, and submitted to my academic peers. I want your feedback, as I feel you guys would 'get it.'

Chip

Rules vs. Principles

I'll definitely read the essay. One thing, though (not sure if you care), your RL name and a certain company name are embedded in the document's metadata. Just so's you know ...

This was interesting but I don't agree. Principles-based systems always work better than rule-based ones, for many of the reasons you mention. Also, rules-based systems tend to put off people who can think clearly and logically, and are repelled both by the stupidity of the rules (for some are bound to be stupid) and the stupidity of the people who tend to be attracted by rules-based systems.

So what went wrong with Wikipedia? Simple: the principle that anyone can edit. This (as we all agree) might have been a good way to begin the project. It was not a good way to continue it.

i think we do agree. principles work better than rules.



i appreciate your candor, but i've always been transparent.

The problem runs even deeper than that. In 2001, "God-King" Jimbo issued his dictum ex cathedra that not only was instant editing by anyone a principle, it was a "sacred" principle. It is little wonder that the "flagged revisions" reform is not taking hold, and probably never will. This principia sacra, along with Jimbo's warped notions of "neutrality" and "consensus", form the unholy trinity of the wiki-cult. I doubt that Jimbo will ever directly acknowledge making a mistake on something as big and basic as this. To do so would be to challenge the whole basis of the wiki-cult which has fed him for years.

I don't mean to be rude, but that short essay wouldn't get you very far toward a PhD at any institution I've ever been associated with. I say this not because I disagree with most of your ideas, but simply because your essay isn't very good. But to be more specific:

The whole principles versus rules dichotomy is overstated, if not outright false. Most extant systems are in fact hybrids of these two. You state that "Americans" will ask not if something is moral but if it is lawful, and this is perhaps most glaringly demonstrates the hollowness of that argument. Many of the current issues in American society (abortion/reproductive rights, capital punishment, affirmative action/quotas, prisoner of war treatment/torture, and on and on) are caused by the disjunction of law and principle or morality. Indeed, one can view much of the Constitution and Bill of Rights as "principle", then encoded in a variety of rules.

You then go further and state unequivocally that principle-based systems are to be preferred, while admitting that principles are modified by rules, etc, etc. It is all a bit of a hash, and unsupported by sound academic underpinnings.

Your condemnation of Wikipedians as "idiots", while one I agree with (on the principle that twenty idiots and one genius are, on WP, indistinguishable from twenty-one idiots) lacks any real basis. In order to support your thesis (no pun intended), you need to differentiate more carefully between the various types and sub-types of idiot on Wikipedia, and why, for example, they can take diametrically opposite views on BLP without anything meaningful actually changing. It's not just that the partisans write the rules ... er .... "principles", but that a different type of idiot generally writes and manages the principles, and others game the system.

Your conclusion, that Wikipedia needs rules, falls into a category I might label "true, but not useful". No rule is going to prevent Jayjg from gaming the system the way he and his posse so skillfully do. A system of rules needs much infrastructure, all of which Wikipedia lacks. It lacks a useful and enforceable enforcement system. It lacks anything resembling real jurisprudence. It lacks leadership of the sort needed to create, adapt, and amend a ruleset. It lacks a mechanism of checks and balances on those who make and enforce rules.

I'm sorry, because I basically agree with your underlying ideas, but your essay is simplistic, unsupported, and poorly reasoned. If you were my thesis student, I'd tell you to save your pennies for another year's tuition.

I think Damian hits a bulls eye here. Contra undertow, people don't have to be particularly smart to live under principles, but principles that are a shifting morass of unreconciled agendas are not useful in debates. By necessity, editors must quote the text; more than a few have discovered that Wikipedia's principles have changed overnight.


Gomi hits a triple 20 here. Even the existing "principles" would be better if the site had a remotely sane method to enforce and amend them.

Correct me here, but aren't you supposed to be the one charged with enforcing and amending them?

ArbCom writes and enforces policy?

Well, formally, we're not supposed to write it, and some feel very strongly about this--including some arbitrators. We weren't elected to be legislators--but it would be nice if someone were.

We really don't enforce it either. Most of what happens goes on elsewhere. It's dealt with on the noticeboards, is ignored, or is privately dealt with. ArbCom only gets cases where there's heft on both sides. I think it's something like a being a territorial judge in the wild west. Yeah, ArbCom "the law" if a posse drags someone into court, but much more often private gunslingers deal with issues themselves.

Yeah, the old traveling circuit court (hence the "circuit" in the term) territorial hangin' judge. A fine tradition.

Didn't even make case-law worth readin' about. Just strung some bad guys up, an' moved on.

You'll need a mule and saddlebags with some whiskey and a copy of Blackstone's. Just the whiskey if Blackstone's can't be found. We don't use it much on WP anywho.

ArbCom: in the semi-literate tradition of Davy Crockett!

Absolutely. Without leadership, Wikipedia will flounder is floundering. All the other problems I see as a symptom of this basic lack.

Kevin

Even odder, there's a bibliography attached, that is full of books dealing with OpenOffice and StarOffice.....I guess he just recycled an old document format.

Which are ignored and violated every day by certain high-ranking administrators.


Go on, keep making those x-cuses.

"I swear, it's not my fault! It's not my job!"

I didn't mean to imply that this was actually a PhD thesis, as gaining such status in the accounting world would be quite a tangent. I was using the term thesis to be colloquial. My essay was written off the cuff, and was more to be taken as my opinion as to the state of things, and not one relevant to my own discipline. I apologize if it was implied that this was academic work to promote my own career. It was at best a chance to stimulate conversation.

Rules v. principles are very pertinent in my discipline (accounting) and I take no offense by your comment. My jargon was poor, and I did not mean it to be misleading. As a paper that I am writing, whether principles such as GAAP, or rules, such as the IRC, was meant to intrigue my own professor.

IFRS is a principle guided system that is trying to unite the entire world as far as financial statements are concerned. I was simply drawing an analogy. I was playing the devil's advocate, and I appreciate all commentary.

When I do write a thesis to attain my doctorate, it will have nothing to do with WP.

Chip

Rules vs. Principles - that's wrong, it's not one verses the other, you have rules and principles.

A rule is a rule - it's usually the best way to do something. You obey it or suffer the consequences. If that rule falls short in a particular circumstance then you revise the rule, or you neglect it and offer a rationale. Let me give you an example; police officers don't write the laws, elected officials do. But during a fire the police are going to ignore all traffic and zoning laws and redirect traffic in a safe an appropriate way.

This is where Wikipedia fails; when there is a fire, a hundred incompetent admins will go and harass the bucket brigade for jaywalking. The root of the problem is that these incompetent admins don't share Wikipedia's principles of creating an encyclopedia. This will be apparent in the fact that they don't work on articles, choosing instead to saunter around lecturing the people that do.

He can always beef it up using the output of the posdmodernism generator and defend it in one of the postmodernism infested faculties of social science.

I just kept thinking of 'Freedom of Choice' by Devo while I was reading....

I guess it is a good start.... more later as I need to eat my curry...

I'm of the considered opinion that while Wikipedia is edited by unknown people and ignoramuses, while it is gamed by the most persistent and obsessive, while it is run for the benefit of those who play the system most effectively, it will never ever be any better than it is today.

Which is to say, that it is the enemy of scholarship and an indictment on what happens when society's basic foodstuff, knowledge, is run on anarchist lines.

By way of contrast to the dispiriting poverty of Wikipedia, consider this marvelous presentation at TED Talks by Sir Ken Robinson on the importance of creativity in education.

Now let me ask...

Does Wikipedia have a rule that defines terms for admins and other wikicrats?

If so, can wikicrats run for reelection? For how many consecutive/non consecutive terms?

Is there a rule about wikicrats accountability? Can they be evaluated, either from below or from above? If so, what happens if such evaluations are negative?

Luís Henrique

Wikipedia admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, checkusers, ad nauseum are Tyrants for Life™, with no term limits, no systematic accountability (other than the ad hoc strictures of their primitive warlord society), no ongoing or retrospective evaluation, and no mechanism for recall.

i do think that there is an irony that calls bureaucrats elected officials, which is actually opposed to the simple fact that, that by definition, crats are appointed. perhaps a misnomer.

i do appreciate the reading of my essay.

I see... we used to have that in real life here in Brazil... we even had a name for it... what was it, even...? Ah... dictatorship.

Luís Henrique

My most recent understand is that ArbCom cases don't have "precedential" value. Is that still correct? If it is then ArbCom is incapable of providing users (other than the poor parties before them in any instant case) with any guidance in how to order their behavior and avoid running afoul of the warlords. Providing such guidance ought to be the most fundamental service of any system of adjudication. But by not providing this guidance ArbCom is useful to status quo of Wikipedia in two ways. First it makes itself the perfect tool for Mr. Wales whims, something that happen less in recent time. Second, and more serious in the present context, it provides the for the maintenance of the latent "gaming" level of Wikipedia that rules despite whatever the manifest policies or rules might be.

That's correct; such guidance isn't possible in a system with the delightfully oxymoronic concept of purely descriptive law.

This is one of the central problems for the site. Policy is never fixed and clear, which leads to a lot of gaming in the entrenched disputes that inevitably occur.

They can always round twice the usual number of suspects, can't they?