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MatthewLadnerPaper1 18 - 06 Dec 2011 - Main.DevinMcDougall
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Wikipedia: Anarchy or Hierarchy? | | | I agree that Wikipedia's hierarchy doesn't have categorically exclusionary effects--to the extent it forces would-be contributors to conform to a higher standard, it results in a qualitatively superior product. But, the presence of the hierarchy surely excludes some potential users who are not willing and/or able to incur the costs (neurotically citing, for instance) that come with participation. Because Wikipedia has a hierarchy that, to an extent, discourages participation (or, at the very least, disproportionately encourages a certain type of informed, legitimate participation), it seems somewhat dubious to credit anarchism with its qualitative superiority.
-- MatthewLadner - 29 Oct 2011+ | |
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> | Reading your piece, I have the sense that there might be definitional issues involved. I think a point motivating Eben's comments is that anarchism is not necessarily synonymous with a lack of organization. The term anarchy, like privacy, has been used with a very wide range of meanings. In your opening sentences, you equate anarchism with "production without property rights," an association Eben might have made in class at some point (or not, I'm not sure). However, I think the equation is too simplistic. What about a Stalinist society in which there are no property rights? Is this anarchist? I don't think so.
More broadly, I think the "is Wikipedia anarchist"/"what is anarchism" issue cluster is somewhat orthogonal to what I take to be your main point. As I read it, your main interest is more like "has Wikpedia become too bureaucratized/hierarchical to do its job well?" That's a question that can be, in a straightforward manner, tested against evidence. I don't think you need to get into the definitional quagmire of whether it qualifies as anarchist or not.
Instead, I think what you would need to do is define some metrics and apply them. What is that Wikipedia should be doing? How good is it at doing that thing? Is there evidence that "X or Y added procedure" has decreased the ability of Wikipedia to do the things it should be doing?
-- DevinMcDougall - 06 Dec 2011 |
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