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MatthewLadnerPaper1 7 - 26 Oct 2011 - Main.MatthewLadner
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Introduction | | | The effects of Wikipedia's bureaucratization go further, however, as they present potential editors with non-trivial costs. A 2009 Wall Street Journal article explained, 49,000 editors left Wikipedia in the first quarter of 2009--10 times more than left in the first quarter of 2008--because of the "plethora of rules Wikipedia has adopted to bring order to its unruly universe -- particularly to reduce infighting among contributors about write-ups of controversial subjects and polarizing figures." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html. To the extent new editors must understand the Wikipedia power structure, conform to a Manual of Style, adhere to templates, contend with highly motivated and more technologically powerful users, and shape their content in a way that makes its removal and/or alteration less likely, participation in the Wikipedia community involves costs that may have the same exclusionary impact that traditional property rights effect. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Power_structure. In other words, where the absence of property rights opened the door to participation in the Wikipedia community, an increasingly complex set of rules governing participation may be having the opposite effect. While these barriers to participation are not derived from a legal regime akin to copyright, their exclusionary consequences are nevertheless comparable to property rights'. To the extent this is true, it seems too formalistic to still credit anarchism for Wikipedia's qualitative superiority on the grounds that the exclusionary rules pervading the community, while significant, are not products of property rights. | |
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< | Finally, Wikipedia faces operational realities and, as a result, accepts donations from private (often corporate) entities in order to finance its operations. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors. While these donors may not exert direct influence over Wikipedia, they nevertheless impose, indirectly, their expectations and values on the organization's leaders. To the extent Wikipedia relies on these entities, its content faces an outer limit of its benefactors values and/or expectations. To stay within this limit , it seems inevitable that some content will have to be excluded notwithstanding users' preferences and the "organic" evolution of Wikipedia will become increasingly "synthetic." | >
> | Finally, Wikipedia faces operational realities and, as a result, accepts donations from private (often corporate) entities in order to finance its operations. See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors. While these donors may not exert direct influence over Wikipedia, they nevertheless impose, indirectly, their expectations and values on the organization's leaders. To the extent Wikipedia relies on these entities, its content faces an outer limit of its benefactors values and/or expectations. To stay within this limit, it seems inevitable that content will be excluded notwithstanding users' preferences--thus, Wikipedia's "organic" evolution of Wikipedia will become increasingly "synthetic." | | | Conclusion
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