There are a number of resemblances between the structure, governance and ideology of Wikipedia, and those of a totalitarian state.

1. Ruled by one Party. All advancement and reward and recognition is strictly through the Party ranks.

2. Absurd elections which are totally controlled by the Party. They may not be for any but the Party, they attended almost exclusively by those who want advancement in the Party, and who naturally vote 'yes' in the hope that their own 'yes' will eventually come. Negative votes are closely watched. They must be for the right 'reasons', i.e. genuine conflicts with Party ideology. If the reasons are 'wrong', the culprit is relentlessly bullied and hounded. The outcome of each election is determined in any case by a high-ranking Party official or 'bureacrat'.

3. All advancement depends on public admission of total subservience to the Party line or ideology. A candidate for advancement must make a series of statements partly intended as public humiliation, partly to test their public acknowledgement of ideological principles and commitment to the Party.

4. Resistance to power by any other party or interest. This principle is even used by the Wikipedian resistance, on the grounds that if one Party is so bad, even more of them must be worse. Freedom of association is strictly forbidden, as is any form of canvassing.

5. Belief in a supernatural governing principle that regulates all things and to which all must be utterly subservient. Marxism has the 'progress of history'. Fascism has the 'will of the people'. Wikipedia has 'the mighty Wiki'. The Wiki is all-powerful and no one can resist it. "Do not test Wikipedia". I have heard this many times - does anyone have some concrete examples? We also have 'the project' and of course 'the community'. This principle is always invoked whenever the community or its ruling elite is about to do something very bad.

6. A 'single mad belief' that may not be challenged, and on whose existence the whole structure depends. In Wikipedia it is an over-restrictive egalitarianism, the belief that everyone can edit and everyone contributes equally to 'the project'.

7. Hostility to any kind of real individualism, and a requirement of total conformity to the group ideology. Also combined with the willingness (very common in totalitarian regimes) to forgive almost anything provided that the culprit publicly renounce their former crimes or sins, and commits themself wholeheartedly to the ideology. (Common in the cultural revolution, and in Pol Pot's regime. Also a fundamental principle of Christianity - but then totalitarian regimes have a lot in common with religious belief-systems).

8. A weird mix of ultra-liberal beliefs and restrictive social conservatism. Hitler was both a vegetarian, a green, an enemy of the church. But also a repressive conservative who toadied up to big business, and a virulent racist. In Wikipedia it is OK to have a picture of a vagina on your user page. But call someone a c---, and the block hammer is out.

9. Dependence on slave labour. No individual may claim recognition for any of their contributions to 'the project' (unless of course it is through advancement in the Party). This is combined with a system of petty and childish reward-tokens which are given for acts which are consistent with the Party-belief and ideology, and generally being a 'good citizen'. In the Soviet era this this took the form of Stakhanovism. E.g. here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Medal_trudovoj_doblest.png, and note the resemblance of the medal to a 'Barnstar'.

10. Show trials as well as secret trials.

11. A public and a secret police force. The public police force requires Party membership (and is really one and the same thing). The secret police force employs all sorts of spying methods. the concealment, in defence of which public or personal safety is argued. (The French revolutionaries had the 'committee of public safety' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_public_safety which ironically made the republic far less safe as the committee executed thousands of individuals). The Wikipedia secret intelligence force may also arrest and execute for 'behavioural reasons'. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lon...use/HeadleyDown.

I take it for granted that Wikipedia was designed in accordance with that excellent work The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.

I thought you were trolling for a second, but you are brilliantly right.




See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein

Beautiful.

In WikiCulture, the Totality is less than the sum of its parts.

Way less.

Many of your points are well taken. But cult is still a better comparison than totalitarian state. Totalitarian states seek to be just what the name implies: the total. They undermine, subvert, suppress or replace every institution or sphere of influence other than the state. Civic society, public institutions, trade unions, press, churches all become targets. A cult on the other hand operates in wider societies in which many of these free institutions exist. Cults also seek to be the person's only source of social sustenance but do so undermining the individuals ability to access other viable sources of identity and fulfillment not by removing these institution but by convincing adherents to never walk through their still available doors.

Giving some brief thought as to how they do this, off the cuff and not meant to be exhaustive:

• They make adherents believe that they have unique access to the truth and that that special access will be lost to the individual if they are corrupted by contact with outsiders. The adherent has achieved this special knowledge, salvation or enlightenment as a result of separating him/herself from the outside world. Participation in the wider society will cause the loss of this higher state. On Wikipedia this might be manifest in excessive edit counts and seeking status in "positions of trust" such as adminship and offices. The sheer amount of time that seeking these "on-wiki" goals deters particpation in the wider society.
• They produce a bunker mentality in which all outside institutions are seen as using all means to attack, undermine and destroy the cult. The adherent is a militant in war-like struggle. Participation in the wider society becomes betrayal. On Wikipedia this is seen in the rallying against Brandt, Badsites, and Freeculture fundamentalism (more on this below). It also manifests itself in fantasy "combat" provided by the anti-vandal patrols.
• The cult offers the adherent rewards they could not achieve from usual institutions providing the reward. This is the cult as users of the losers and I believe might be the most powerful means of keeping the sheep in the fold. Wikipedians take great care and effort to reinforce the importance of the tasks they preform and "skill and talent" that they imagine themselves to possess. This demonstrated by mutual veneration of "article writers" operating outside established peer review process.

If Wikipedia is best described as cult operating in the context of a open society with competing institutions Freeculture might have some truly totalitarian aspects. Freeculture has shown the ability to actually undermine independent institution invaluable to a free society. We have seen this with the echo-chamber of crowd-sourced media such as blogs leading to the loss of newspapers with investigative capacities in entire cities, removing invaluable checks and safeguards against power and privilege. We currently see a centuries old public provider of cultural access, the National Portrait Gallery finding its resources plundered by a Freeculture fanatic. The very notion that the producers of creative works ought to be rewarded for their work, central to a free society, be it capitalist, socialist or mixed, finds itself under assault. Freeculture might very well undermine other civic and social institutions in ways not readily apparent and may amount to a serious threat to a pluralistic free society.

One feature that many cults have is a never-ending ladder of expensive levels to keep the adherents hungry for more. WP seems to be lacking this -- there's not really much beyond editor / admin / bureaucrat / checkuser / arbitrator / cabal. Perhaps there should be senior mathematics editor, grand supreme admin, imperial worshipful checkuser, Duke of Wikipedia, Groom of the Privy Stool, and so on, with the highest levels having the right to keep their hat on when talking to Jimbo Wales.

In cults, the gurus generally hand out 'holy sweeties' as rewards for all the free labor given without rights or reward.

In the Wikipedia cult, they hand out ... digital images called barnstars for all the free labor given without rights or reward.

At least the Wikipedia is less fattening than most cults.

The cultic model is a good one, and the big question generally is, will the cult survive the death of its founder?

"If you meet the Jimmy Wales on the road, Linji ... kill him."

Is WP:POINT concrete enough? It seems to me to be a direct reflection of that ideology (i.e., "The Wiki is the Lord thy God; you shall not put your God to the test").

If you look at the history of totalarian regimes, they all began as cults. The only difference is the scale. With Wikipedia's global dominance, I think we are now at the point here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

Some cults do seize power and become totalitarian regimes. However most cults simply remain cults. Despite Asimov's The Foundation I doubt if an encyclopedia will conquer the world or gain state power in any nation.

It may succeed in doing serious damage to the body of human knowledge.

Sure. I don't minimize the harm at all. But the harm is mostly to those outside Wikipedia. The distinction between Cults/Dictatorships matters. Wikipedians are not slaves in some Gulag. They are for the most part responsible for the harm they do while remain inside. They need to leave. In order to do so they only have to walk through the doors of those other available and viable social institutions to gain the support they need. They need not "overthrow" anyone or feel obligated to fix Wikipedia.

This is the main worry.



The main aim of cults that become dictatorships is the control of information. In the 1930's it was the radio, and the incredible shows put on at Nuremberg. The difference is that in the 1930's it was just Germany. Today, the world.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=...F-8&sa=N&tab=wi

'The actual effect far surpassed anything I had imagined,' said Speer.

While I don't want to get too apocalyptic, destroying human knowledge is of negative value to democracies and highly prized by some totalitarian regimes. Why would we want to support that?

My thesis is that the damage caused by Wikipedia is most heavily suffered by those who become engaged in WikiDrama.

Wikipedia is destroying human knowledge, ergo etc.



Wrong. The people who suffer are those who read and believe this crap. There are millions and millions of these. I suffer a bit but that doesn't matter.

One word: Seigenthaler

Absotively.

But they lack the clean hands needed to complain.

I'm fairly certain most if not all of these statements could be applied to school classrooms, retail stores, office cube farms, and half a dozen other common places. Usually it is the existence of outside checks and balances (real police, courts, etc) who have alternate methods of force to ensure fairness from the internal totalitarian state (a school can expel someone for instance, but a court can find it did so improperly) that renders the situation moot.

I would tend to think the same thing applies to Wikipedia, to the extent that a court wouldn't care if 1 in 50 workers complained about their hours (let's say that is similar to blocks for civility), but would care if all Hispanic workers were forced to wear nametags saying "Hablo Espanol" (let's say that is the same as WP refusing to remove copyvios).

I'm guessing you didn't read past #7...?

Even so, scale matters. A totalitarian high school classroom isn't especially troubling to society, in the grand scheme of things. Too few people are affected.

Yep. A nice Catch-22 (or maybe 52 pickup?) there. If you speak up, you become part of the dramah. If you just ignore the dramah, most of the time it won't effect you.

Most of the time.

Yes. It is fundamental to Wikipedia that there is no 'freedom of association', i.e. no freedom to form other groups that might challenge the existing power structure. That, and the ban on canvassing are strong forces to preserve that structure.

Interesting that Wikipedia always has an article about the things it prohibits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association

Before the "cult" discussion restarts in this thread, there is an existing thread on Wikipedia-as-cult here.

Simple, don't work from the inside. If you do you sound like Wikipedia, the food is so bad and the portions are so small.




The cult material is a counter argument answering the ridiculous "totalitarian" argument. It does not need to be separated. It is not totalitarian if you can leave anytime you want. Better figure out why you don't want to leave.




More tiresome wonkery.

Petey, baby, you are thinking too hard and too much. Turn off the old brain cells and take a week at the seashore. We'll be here when you get back.

I did, here were my thoughts



I think this sort of contradiction is inherent in any situation, don't forget that 40%+ of Americans are independent voters.



Ever see those gold stars they give out to kids in school who do their homework?



In New York at least you can be fired from a job with or without cause, they don't need to say who spoke against you, why they decided what they did, etc, same thing in most private school situations.



Public safety, security guard, hidden cameras at work, and computer monitoring at work and school seem to be a secret police force that is selected by those in control without the consent of those not in control.

I have a few questions.

1. What software does Wikipedia Review use and does it have a "block this user from starting new topics" feature?
2. Surely the comparison of Wikipedia to Kristallnacht is enough to invoke Godwin's Law, right? There doesn't have to be a specific reference to Hitler, does there?

An insightful and coherent analysis and critique of the English Wikipedia's governance model (or lack thereof) would be interesting to read and respond to. Let me know if someone writes one.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Usenet any more.

Spoken like a true cult member. If you have nothing to add, except insults and
"holy holy Jimbo" chants, start your own forum. Therein you may censor Peter
Damian, and everyone else you dislike, all you wish.

WP isn't a totalitarian state -- they can't even get the trains to run on time. I still think it's more of an anarchic warlord society, perhaps like current Afghanistan, or maybe like the Mad Max movies. Here's what I said some time ago:

That's a vicious and unpleasant comparison, what have you got against Afghanistan?

One of the interesting elements most cults exploit is this seemingly hardwire mental tendency of human being to enslave themselves. They exploit both our need to be within a group and the tendency towards the habituation of behavioral patterns ... even if either is causing us loss or suffering.

Most of the cults, and cult apologists, throw out the pithy line, "You can always leave" which is generally short for, "You can always leave ... but you do know you will be doomed for eternity and suffer in hell". The problem is, people cant leave even when they know they really should. Something deeper and more sub-conscious has kicked in, holding them enslaved to the group. This is why responsible states require "duty of care" and recognize offences such as "undue influence".

In the case of a religion being taken to court, undue influence is usually assumed UNLESS the religion can prove it did all it could reasonable do to avoid exploiting individuals. Is the Pee-dia is utterly blind and to any responsibility it might have to its adherents, or does it just deny it has any?

What is a state? Well, obviously, the Wikipedia is not a political state but it does operates one element of a state at least at a more efficient, aggressive and more global level than most states do ... information warfare/propaganda. Increasingly, it also appears engaged in diplomacy with states and other multi-national interests.

Given that it operates across states, and is fairly unfocused in its aims, the cult model fits much better. The question is, what are the values it is consciously or unconsciously propagating worldwide?

The values are so much not about "all the world's knowledge for free", as it says on the label. They are about the manner in which to gain power and influence, and sustain it, whilst playing the game, freeculture, and so on.

Read the short story a long time ago-- it's a good one. A twist on bros before ho's except that the bro is a telepathic dog. Close parallels with the "C.O." telepath animals that run the soldiers in the dystopian future of the Outer Limits' Soldier (of course also written by Ellison).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_(The_Outer_Limits)

Ah, Michael Ansara. He did cooped-up rage so well....

as you are well aware, the Big Wiki is not a state; it is a wiki.

and is it a totalitarian wiki? this implies that The Big Wiki has power, and therefore has some sort of ability to act in a totalitarian manner. it does seem however that unless you basically abide by the wiki-fact that that one of the sole flounders basically cannot be wrong (you know who) then they will attempt to troll you until you leave or ban you


oh well

Jeez, sometime people in this place have a flair for the melodramatic.

No, Wikipedia is not like a totalitarian state.

• Totalitarian states have no tolerance for sources of information other than from themselves and are therefore at constant war with those sources.
• Wikipedia is not trying to close down alternatives to itself.
• Wikipedia is at constant war with itself.
• Wikipedia cannot be overthrown. Even if Wikipedia's servers all died tomorrow, the Wikipedia virus will simply colonize somewhere else.
  
  No, Wikipedia is not an oligarchical collective (although I'm grateful that someone has pointed out Emmanuel Goldstein's excellent essay on the subject).
  
• Wikipedia presents itself as a collective effort by equals, but in reality its more like an intellectual parasite whose input is created by a few and whose output is the least common denominator of the many.
• The pseudo-society created by Wikipedia bears most strong resemblance to anarchist collectives
• It has no great central leader who commands respect or fear. It has Jimbo instead. And the ArbCom (a wonderful Newspeak contraction)

The real startling thing is that there are people who know all of this, and yet still edit the beast on the sub-atomic chance that they are wrong - a clear form of insanity if ever there was. And a lot of the insane are posting on this forum.

Eventually the people ripped off by Wikipedia are going to bite back by refusing any access to materials created.

Only when people with some money and influence start to take an alternative strategy seriously will Wikipedia's influence begin to wane - especially if the search engines back the alternative over WP.

Its not 1984 any more ...

The problem is really very simple, and no doubt obvious. Wikipedia, ironically, is not edited. Yes, it's written, and erased, and re-written by people termed "editors." But for all the bewildering layers of administration and bureaucracy and noticeboards and arbitrators and cabals and committees, nobody - as a matter of fundamental principle - can take editorial decisions on the content.

And that's why it's unworkable, which on the one hand provides limitless entertainment, and on the other is a serious matter because the inaccuracies and bizarre biases are picked up and repeated throughout the virtual universe.

At least I think I have a faint hope that it will ultimately become impossible for contributors to edit Wikipedia without leaving their screens and visiting a library, because every source online will be an echo of a Wikipedia article and thus (ironically, again) not reliable.

I have thought that the use of the term "editor" exactly along these lines. Bringing on "editors" in this sense would be a first line of defense for quality and responsibility.

I thought maybe you were gong in another direction with libraries. Why not rely on librarians to vet the identities of Wikipedians? A least they could require as much vetting to write a biography on Robert Kennedy (and slander Seigenthaler) as to check one out from a library. Librarians might embrace the task in a serious real world collaboration. They could even show the Wikipedians how to do research, if Durova doesn't alienate them with her arrogance first. It would be a relief just to know that Wikipedians can find their way to a library.

Wikimedia really pooched their cred with librarians. Back in 2005/2006 there were some determined efforts at outreach from library science groups to Wikipedia, which were largely ignored by Wikipedia, in part because of "not invented here" syndrome and in part because libraries are not exciting sexy places that get Jimmy laid or help him buy castles. The cold reception that the Wikipedia community gave to the professional library science community turned the latter off to collaborating with Wikipedia.

One of the true "five pillars" of Wikipedia is that Wikipedia is unlike everything else that has ever come before. Therefore, examining how other people have done seemingly similar things (be it governance, categorization, or even writing style) is bad and dangerous, because it risks perpetuating the mistakes of the past. You must always remember that Wikipedia is moving through completely uncharted territory at every turn and must always find its own solutions to these problems, which are so distinctively unique that nobody else has ever before even contemplated how to think about them, let alone solve them.

Granted, in which case, it seems to me that the way Jimbo operated the whole thing prior to the creation of Arbcom would be a travesty. Instead of being conservative and moving slowly, he chose to let all the genitals flap in the breeze, leading to near-chaos, MMORPG-ism, and that "cabal" business. Instead of starting out by writing a "constitution" of how it was to be run, he let his random users make up the rules as time passed. Yeah, it generated a huge database very quickly (if you can call 6 years "quick"). It also produced one of the greatest soap operas ever posted online. Plus so much mis/disinformation in said database, no one can even make a rough estimate of the problem.

There must be another way to write an encyclopaedia.

if so - and I hope you are right - what is it?

More than anything else I think this accounts for my profound dislike of Wikipedians. They are a bunch of mouth breathng Mirandas, too easily impressed with their fellow islanders:

I think this is the best description that I have yet read of The Grand Delusion™ that underlies all Wikipediotism.

Agree.

Why would the Wikipedians remind you of Miranda?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a Miranda warning for that one.

I believe that Britannica quite successfully wrote an encyclopedia for quite a number of years by having expert editors work on articles that had been mostly written by a large untrained body of non-experts.

What about verified anonymous experts?