User:Gigs/Randomcratic

(This essay was posted on the RfC for BLPs, when BLPs tagged as unsourced were being considered for deletion en mass. I think it makes some interesting points so I am preserving it here.  Please do not edit this copy of it other than for spelling. -ed)

When the unreferenced tag was developed, straw poll was held *among the editors who had designed it* about where it should be placed. There were about 30 votes cast (out of a universe of perhaps 10,000 regular editors). These comprised 9 votes for for "top of article page", 10 votes for "bottom of article page", and 13 votes for "talk page". Needless to say, the obvious fourth alternative "nowhere" was not even in the ballot.

So, if that tag is now showing at the top of hundred of thousands of articles, it is because nine editors wanted it there, twenty-three did *not* want it there, and 9,970 editors did not have a chance to give their opinion.

A similar story applies to the Notability guidelines. I found a straw poll in the Notability talk page about a dozen or so specific questions. The questions were all in jargon (like "PROD" in this RfC) which I was unable to decipher, so presumably only the people who had been involved in the writing of the guidelines voted. There were less than 200 votes, and some of the items in the ballot passed with a tight majority — that is, less than 1% of the pool of active editors. Unfortunately I could not determine whether the final declared "consensus" honored these votes, or — as in the case of the tag — the minority opinion prevailed anyway.

As for this RfC, I see that 400 editors took part in phase I, 40 took part in phase II. The honest thing to do would be to declare this RfC hopelessly bungled and start all all over, beginning with the basic questions — like "are unrefernced BLPs a real problem?". Instead, it seems that this RfC will follow the same path as the other straw polls: the proposers stubbornly insist with their thesis, ignoring all data and arguments to the contrary, until all opposers get tired and leave; and then they will declare the "consensus" to be whatever they like.

In the summary to Phase 1 it was stated that all participants were concerned with the welfare of WIkipedia. I beg to differ. People who really care about Wikipedia should want to know, first, whether the unsourced BLPs are a real problem, and second, whether the proposed solution will do more good than harm. I don't see this worry among the proposers of the RfC. Indeed, it seems that the surest way to end a thread in this discussion is to post concrete numbers and examples. Instead of debating that data and what it means, the proposers merely shift to other threads.

It is clear to me that the original purpose of this RfC was not to find the best way to deal with the "problem" (or to find out whether the "problem" was real), but merely to obtain some legitimacy for what was a predetermined decision, namely that unsourced BLPs are to be deleted. If there is one thing that is clear from this discussion, is that unsourced BLPs are harmless and deleting them solely for being unsourced is extremely harmful.

The only explanation that I can find for the persistent wish to delete unsourced BLPs is psychological, namely the "lust for power" of editors who are tired of being just "workers" and want to be "bosses". In academia, were I work, this sort of thing happens all the time: people get tired of being just ordinary professors or researchers, and try to move to a position where, insted of working, they direct and control the work of other people.

How can one rise to be a "boss" in Wikipedia? Certainly not by editing contents: even if you edit 10,000 articles over several years and create a handful of "featured" ones, you will be just a "worker" like any of the other 10,000 regular editors. The same applies to any work (such as sourcing) that requires reading each article and thinking about its contents: no one can do that on more that 50-100 articles per day, the same top rate as for contents editing. Moreover, in that sort of work you often have to justify your edits to other "workers", and that puts you in the same "social level" as them.

A "boss" must do something that affects hundreds of thousands of articles, and does not require interacting with "workers" at their same level. It must be something definitive that an ordinary "worker" cannot stop or undo. It must be something that clearly put the "boss" on a higher level than the "workers".

That is the only explanation I can find for why we got the editorial tags at the top of articles. Robot-assisted tagging does not require thinking, so one can easily tag 1000 articles a day. The tagger is clearly "boss" because the tags are not "work", but "commands": every editorial tag says "I want this to be done, so some worker had better do it". A tagger is clearly above ordinary editors, because (by definition) the only way these can remove a tag is by complying with the wish of the tagger. Article tags have also the "advantage" that they violate the basic rule, "all editorial comments must go in the talk page": that is an advantage because (as in real life) one's social status is measured by the rules one can violate impunely.

And that is also the only explanation I can think for this RfC and the way it was carried out. The real "problem" of the unsourced BLPs is that the "bosses, after sticking hundreds of thousands of tags, realized that they had been largely ignored — that is, the "workers" did not rush out to comply to their commands. That was doubly frustrating: not only it negated the authority of the "bosses", but made them look silly for wasting all that tagging work for nothing.

Enter then the idea of deleting all unsourced BLPs. Like tagging, deleting is something that can be done very quickly en masse, without having to read the articles. Like tagging, deletinon cannot be undone by ordinary editors. Even if each deletion has to be voted in the AfD, the place and timing of the vote ensures that voters will be mostly "bosses", and the final decision is made by a "boss": if one or two "workers" happen to see the AfD all in time and cast their vote, they can be just ignored.

That explains why no one here seems interested in statistics that prove that unsourced BLPs are harmless, or in the damage that deleting them might do. That explains why the proposers adamantly refuse to allow an editor other than the tagger to remove a tag without complying with its command. That is why they adamantly refuse to extend the AfD voting period beyond 7 days: for, if more "workers" get a chance to vote, they may out-vote the "bosses". After all, a Master of a thousand Slaves is not a Master at all if he lets even one Slave disobey his commands, or lets Slaves vote on wether to obey them.

Five years ago, Wikipedia could be defined as "three million encyclopedia articles which anyone can edit". I am afraid that today it has become "a decadent social networking site with 10,000 members who have three million articles to play with". One just has to look at the pages in the "User talk:", "Wikipedia talk:", and "Template talk:" to realize that most Wikipedia decisions are being made by a small minority of "bosses" who seem to derive more plasure out of social interaction (and, in particular, the sense of power that comes from "bossing" over other members) than on making real substantial contributions to Wikipedia.

At the root of the problem is that Wikipedia's decision-making mechanism is thoroughly broken. As we saw here, and in countless other cases, any clique of ten editors can write a rule or standard, vote it among themselves, and declare it "consensus". Almost every guideline in Wikipedia:* was decided in this way. No country could survive more than a few years with such a "randomcratic" government; and it seems that Wikipedia cannot either.

All the best (if still possible to hope), --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:43, 23 February 2010 (UTC)