Wikipedia:Power structure: Difference between revisions

The power structure of Wikipedia is a bit complicated at first. This document tries to describe the status quo on the English Wikipedia, and is not intended to develop any alternative models. For these, see Wikipedia:Decision Making Process and Meta-Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's power structure is a mix of anarchic, despotic, democratic, and republican elements.

Anarchy

Wikipedia pages can be edited collaboratively by anyone, including anonymous users. Every user starts with these same powers. They can be lost over time (see below) but if our policies are followed, it is possible for everyone to become a respected editor.

Similarly, our policies and guidelines are also worked out and continually changed through collaborative editing and the search for consensus and compromises. Besides the talk pages of the respective policy pages, the mailing lists are used to discuss these matters.

Despotism

User:Jimbo Wales is our "benevolent dictator", at least we hope that he is benevolent :-). He has paid for all of Wikipedia's operations with no financial return whatsoever, and retains a veto right on all decisions. He also sometimes unilaterally announces certain decisions, such as user bans, and has elevated some guidelines to the status of enforced policies. Regarding bans, Jimbo demands that every ban of a signed in user has to be approved by him, unless the user is a simple vandal, in which case he can be banned immediately.

Jimbo's active influence is very limited.. That does not mean that he is lazy: He reads almost every post on the mailing lists and responds to many of them, but in most cases, he tries to let the wiki-system and WikiLove work their magic.

Democracy

Not all conflicts can be resolved through consent, and in many cases, simple votes are organized using only the wikipages as a tool. Virtually all existing voting methods have been tried and used, and no standard has been agreed upon yet.

Basically, whenever you feel like it, you can try to start a vote on a talk page, but people will probably not participate in it if they think discussion has not yet been exhausted as a way to resolve conflicts of opinion. Votes are also used in project-wide discussions: see meta:power structure.

Republic

Wikipedia has a class of administrators (sysops), who can delete and protect pages and ban anonymous users. These actions are limited and controlled by "the people at large". Deletions are transparently logged, and in all cases but simple junk pages, articles must pass a period of roughly one week on the Votes for deletion page without objections to be deleted. Pages can be protected in an edit war, but only if the sysop is not involved in that conflict.

For the English wiki, sysops are appointed on the wiki-en mailing list. They are either nominated or nominate themselves, and other users can then second the nomination or object to it. If there are no objections within a reasonable period, the user is made a sysop. If there are objections, these have to be resolved first, often by decree from Jimbo.

While sysops are not technically elected, they are representatives of the larger group of Wikipedia users. Their power is strictly limited, and abuse is (theoretically) punished with its removal. In practice, some users have given up their sysop privileges, but in none cases did they have to be revoked.

See also meta:power structure for project-wide discussion of the power structure of wikipedia projects in general, including the power structure of the software, and possible future changes in the power structure.