I describe the complex social and technical environment in which bots exist in Wikipedia, emphasizing not only how bots produce order and enforce rules, but also how humans produce bots and negotiate rules around their operation.  After giving a brief overview of how previous research into Wikipedia has tended to mis-conceptualize bots, I give a case study tracing the life of one such automated software agent, and how it came to be integrated into the Wikipedian community.

The Lives of Bots [PDF, 910KB]

Abstract: We detail the methodology of ‘trace ethnography’, which combines the richness of participant-observation with the wealth of data in logs so as to reconstruct patterns and practices of users in distributed sociotechnical systems.  Trace ethnography is a flexible, powerful technique that is able to capture many distributed phenomena that are otherwise difficult to study.  Our approach integrates and extends a number of longstanding techniques across the social and computational sciences, and can be combined with other methods to provide rich descriptions of collaboration and organization.

Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices (PDF, 361KB)

Citation: Geiger, R.S., & Ribes, D. (2011). Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination Through Documentary Practices. In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences.  Retrieved from http://www.stuartgeiger.com/trace-ethnography-hicss-geiger-ribes.pdf

Abstract:  Is computer-mediated discourse leading to collective political action in the public sphere, or simply more fragmentation? This question has been asked by social and political theorists ever since the Internet entered academia in the early 90s. However, this debate has been recently rekindled by Jurgen Habermas – one of the leading theorists of the public sphere – who recently broke a longstanding silence and spoke out against the Internet as a potentially democratizing medium. Instead of directly intervening in this debate, I interrogate the techno-epistemic conditions of possibility for ‘the blogosphere’ to exist as a sociopolitical entity. Specifically, I analyze social aggregation sites like Technorati, Delicious, Digg, and even Google, which make it possible for collective action to precipitate out of the Internet. I find that Habermasians should not fear fragmentation, but instead integration: the blogosphere as a public sphere is constructed and unified not by ideal discourse, but algorithms.

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the social roles of software tools in the English-language Wikipedia, specifically focusing on autonomous editing programs and assisted editing tools. This qualitative research builds on recent research in which we quantitatively demonstrate the growing prevalence of such software in recent years. Using trace ethnography, we show how these often-unofficial technologies have fundamentally transformed the nature of editing and administration in Wikipedia. Specifically, we analyze „vandal fighting‟ as an epistemic process of distributed cognition, highlighting the role of non-human actors in enabling a decentralized activity of collective intelligence. In all, this case shows that software programs are used for more than enforcing policies and standards. These tools enable coordinated yet decentralized action, independent of the specific norms currently in force.

Download the full paper (PDF, open access from ACM)

When others ask about my academic works and interests, I usually describe myself as someone who comes from a rather multidisciplinary background – philosophy, anthropology, rhetoric, Science and Technology Studies (STS) – and am interested in collaborative and user-generated content on the Internet. Specifically, I talk about my interest in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The last item in this list usually raises some eyebrows, as it seems that everyone in academia has some sort of opinion on this radically new form of knowledge production that pops up nearly every time one queries any major web search engine like Google or Yahoo. Assuming that such a conversation was not merely a formal pleasantry, the following line frequently arises in some form or another: “Here is the problem I have with Wikipedia.”

Often spoken slowly, this sentence is uttered as if it is the preface to what will be a devastating argument, one that will innocently erode my entire research and undermine the subject of my study. “Here is the problem,” they say. “No matter how good on average Wikipedia becomes, no matter how many times Nature certifies it as accurate, and no matter how many people are there checking every edit, there is always the chance that someone has slipped in some disinformation immediately before you visit an article.” Despite the fact that I have heard this critique of Wikipedia countless times, I am still unsure how to answer it. For now, I have settled on the strategy of making myself look confused and asking, “So?”

This usually evokes an intended response of subsequent confusion by my inquisitor. “So? What do you mean, so? It means that Wikipedia can never be reliable, no matter how much time and effort is put into it,” I am told. I can do nothing but agree, although I have absolutely no idea why any of this should matter. “Obviously, there are going to be errors” I begin, but am interrupted. “But the errors in academic publications are different,” comes a pre-emptive response to an objection I did not intend to make. Who said anything about academic publishing, and why is it being compared to Wikipedia? When I tell them that I do not see Wikipedia as a reliable source, and especially when I state that academic publications are far more trustworthy than the user-edited encyclopedia, the conversation shifts dramatically. I apparently was on their side after all.

But whose side am I on, anyway, and more importantly, who are we fighting against? This is revealed with another type of conversation I tend to have with academics – one that happens less often, I should add. After I talk about how I come from philosophy, anthropology, rhetoric, and STS and that am also interested in Wikipedia, their eyes light up. “You know,” the conversation sometimes starts, “I used to not allow my students to cite Wikipedia in their papers.” The confessional continues, sometimes with a rather lengthy narrative about how they started spending time browsing the encyclopedia and found it to be an invaluable resource in their own work. Triumphantly, they often conclude by stating something to the effect of, “And even Science and Nature have to print retractions sometimes, right?”

So these are the battle lines: to cite or not to cite. Those who are “pro-Wikipedia” see the encyclopedia as a valuable and reliable academic resource that can be cited like any other reference work. Those who are “anti-Wikipedia” see the encyclopedia as one that is inherently unstable, and most assuredly not something that should be cited in any scholarly work. In short, it draws on the question: Is Wikipedia accurate?

In this war, the lines have been drawn and academics are taking sides: Nature famously published an article in which they compared Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and found that they roughly contained the same amount of errors. Subsequent comparisons have been published in academic journals, most notably The Chronicle of Higher Education, which gave high marks to some articles and near-failing ones to others. The article, titled “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” ended with a note of ambivalence that implied a negative answer to the question raised. In a well-cited article published in The Journal of American History, Roy Rosenzweig made the same argument, but suggested that academics should work on Wikipedia. The History department of Middlebury College famously voted to ban the use of Wikipedia in papers, and have been called the most reactionary when it comes to the encyclopedia.

Let us examine one of the most widely cited academic articles on Wikipedia: Nature’s 2005 “Internet Encyclopedia’s go Head to Head.” The editorial staff at Nature sent two copies of the same scientific article from Wikipedia and Britannica Online to experts, and asked them to review them for “factual errors, omissions or misleading statements.” With 162 total errors in Wikipedia and 132 in Britannica, the journal concluded that “Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries.” In slightly more than one-thousand words, Nature significantly increased Wikipedia’s credibility in the academic eye, without materially changing any of Wikipedia’s content. Simply by being vetted by Nature against Britannica was taken as a sign of accuracy by many. Subsequent studies of a similar nature followed, the most notable being Roy Rosenweig’s “Can History Be Open Source?” published in The Journal of American History and Brock Read’s “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In both, the goal and result was the same: to examine the reliability of Wikipedia’s articles and come to a conclusion regarding their scholarly quality; both gave mixed reviews indicating that Wikipedia was good, but far from perfect.

Taking a look at scholarly articles regarding Wikipedia, the most cited and/or relevant articles according to various databases are almost always about the project’s reliability, and implicitly or explicitly its worthiness of being an academic source. What follows are EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier’s top ten scholarly articles about Wikipedia, sorted by the database’s relevance scale. Below each title is a quote from the article.

Wikipedia(s) on the language map of the world. [1]

Wikipedia contains nonsense alongside the sense; it contains propaganda and error alongside the facts. It is fiercely up to date, except when it isn’t. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the world as it is. It seems likely that it will continue to be the encyclopedia that the world deserves.

Wikipedia and Psychology:Coverage of Concepts and Its Use by Undergraduate Students. [2]

Wikipedia’s coverage of psychological topics was comprehensive and prominently displayed on the major search engines. In addition, a majority of undergraduate students reported referring to Wikipedia for both personal and school-related activities; however, few students reported using Wikipedia as a formal reference in academic work.

Wikipedia and academic peer review: Wikipedia as a recognised medium for scholarly publication? [3]

[The title should be self-explanatory.]

Evaluating authoritative sources using social networks: an insight from Wikipedia.[4]

Findings – Finds that the question of the reliability regarding Wikipedia content is a challenging one and as Wikipedia grows, the problem becomes more demanding, especially for topics with controversial views such as politics or history.

Beyond Wikipedia.[5]

[This article is not actually about Wikipedia.]

Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past.[6]

To that end, this article seeks to answer some basic questions about history on Wikipedia. How did it develop? How does it work? How good is the historical writing?

Wikipedia rival calls in the experts.[7]

Wikipedia has never given experts special standing when it comes to determining content. And that, critics say, deters the people who ought to be contributing from doing so. Just how big a drawback that is will now be tested, with the launch of an online encyclopaedia that will give privileged status to scientists and other experts. Citizendium, a pilot version of which is due to go live in the next week […] Editors with appropriate academic qualifications will have the power to settle disputes about wording, for example, and stamp articles they perceive to be accurate as ‘approved’.

Wikipedia in the Newsroom[8]

While the line ‘according to Wikipedia’ pops up occasionally in news stories, it’s relatively rare to see the user-created online encyclopedia cited as a source. But some journalists find it very valuable as a road map to troves of valuable information.

Citing Wikipedia.[9]

The words “according to Wikipedia” occasionally appear in newspapers. Some editors’ thoughts on newsroom Wikipedia use:

Wikipedia, DDB, and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).[10]

Concluding page: The arrangement is mutually beneficial: Wikipedia obtains a highly structured authoritative crossreferencing structure for access to its biographies; DDB [a German biographical database] obtains new visibility and a means of bringing new patrons to its catalog.

Publications in The Chronicle of Higher Education follow a similar trend, as the five most relevant articles about Wikipedia are (again, according to the site’s own relevance feature):

Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?[11]

The openness that makes Wikipedia so alluring to its contributors is precisely what discomfits scholars. Because anyone can post, the site is in a constant state of flux — which creates plenty of opportunity for abuse. The common scholarly perception that the site is error-prone is true, if momentary lapses in accuracy are counted.

Building an Encyclopedia, With or Without Scholars[12]

Mr. Colbert portrayed a stereotype that may resonate with some scholars — that of the ignorant rube who wields Wikipedia as a weapon against expertise. “Who is Britannica to tell me George Washington had slaves? If I want to say George Washington didn’t have slaves, that’s my right.

Adventures in the Land of Wikipedia[13]

For now, Wikipedia works. I can hardly wait to start another entry drawn from my research. After my experience receiving an excellent assist from this anonymous knowledge army, I’m prepared to believe that Wikipedia’s millions of eyes will continue its evolution and improve its quality.

Co-Founder of Wikipedia, Now a Critic, Starts Spinoff With Academic Editors[14]

This month Mr. Sanger announced the creation of Citizendium, an interactive online encyclopedia that will be open to public contributors but guided by academic editors. The site seeks to give academics more authorial control — and a less combative environment — than they find on Wikipedia, which affords all users the same editing privileges, whether they have any proven expertise or not.

Middlebury College History Department Limits Students’ Use of Wikipedia[15]

This spring students in history courses at Middlebury College will find a new disclaimer on syllabi warning them that, while Wikipedia is fine for some background research, it is not to be used as a primary source.

At this point, a poignant objection can be made to this line of inquiry: given that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, why should we be focusing on the fact that academics are looking at Wikipedia’s reliability and accuracy? What else is there to look at, besides whether or not the articles present in Wikipedia are encyclopedic and how they are referenced outside of the project? To answer this, we should turn to the Wikipedian Community, and see what they are talking about at the past Wikimanias, the annual conference of Wikipedians:

In 2005, the first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, Germany. The keynote speeches were: “Ten Things That Will Be Free,” in which Jimmy Wales discussed applying Wikipedia’s model to other cultural products; “Wikis Then and Now,” in which Ward Cunningham talked about Wikipedia’s predecessors; “Enterprise Wiki Use,” in which Ross Mayfield showed how businesses are using wiki technology; and “Copyright and Community,” in which Richard Stallman argued that copyleft publishing (which Wikipedia uses) is the only way to foster a meaningful, egalitarian community in the digital age. [16]

In 2006, the second Wikimania was held in Boston, USA. Lawrence Lessig spoke on “The Ethics of the Free Culture Movement.” Benjamin Mako Hill, in a related speech, argued that Wikipedia and the Free Culture Movement do not have a unified definition of what freedom is, and need one desperately. David Weinberger, in a presentation titled “What’s Happening to Knowledge,” claimed that Wikipedia undermines traditional concepts of knowledge and works to create meaning instead of knowledge. In “Universal Access to All Knowledge,” Brewster Kahle argued that all knowledge should be made freely available on the Internet for the good of humanity. Florence Devouard, in “Wikimedia Foundation: Building in Diversity,” spoke about increasing cultural diversity and decreasing systemic bias in Wikipedia.[17]

In 2007, the third Wikimania was held in Taipei, Taiwan. Samuel Klein talked about countering systemic bias by partnering with organizations which distribute computers to third world nations. David Beall and Sabahat Ashraf both gave presentations advocating the use of the project to advance social justice worldwide. A panel was held in which the participants discussed how Wikipedia’s power structure could be more democratic. Delphine Ménard spoke on multiculturalism and how problems of social and cultural conflicts function in Wikipedia. Mathias Schindler compared the economic model of Wikipedia’s web-based publication with that of paper-based encyclopedias throughout history. [18]

Of course, these are only a small sample of the presentations and speeches given at these conferences, and there was much discussion regarding reliability, quality, and Wikipedia’s use in other systems of knowledge production. However, these did not dominate the conferences. Interestingly, out of the almost seventy presentations and speeches given at Wikimania 2007, only about fifteen discussed Wikipedia’s role in educational settings, and most were not focused specifically on the issue of Wikipedia as a reliable, academic source. In fact, a search for “Middlebury,” referring to Middlebury College (who banned Wikipedia as a reference source in February of 2007) on the Wikimania 2007 database of abstracts, presentations, proceedings, and conference-related discussion returns zero results. Considering that the conference was held six months after the well-publicized event that is still being debated in academia, this may be seen as rather surprising omission.

Not so, from the Wikipedian point of view. Wikipedians have perpetually occupied a liminal space with respect to the concept of reliability. Wikipedians have always wanted their project to be considered a reliable, citable source, but simultaneously have known that they are not quite at that level, yet. The first instance of this can be seen in an article published on Kuro5hin in September 2001, a mere eight months after the project was founded. Co-founder Larry Sanger wrote that:

We think we are–gradually, and sometimes from very rough first drafts–developing a reliable resource. […] It seems very likely that, in coming months, Wikipedia will set up some sort of approval process, whereby certain versions of articles receive the stamp of approval of some body of Wikipedia reviewers. […] But after it’s in place, we will be able to present a set of genuine expert-approved articles that can favorably compare with articles from any general encyclopedia–Britannica included.[19]

The project has long had a set of disclaimers, and a specific statement regarding Wikipedia’s lack of accuracy has, with a few short exceptions, been a part of the article “Citing Wikipedia” since February of 2004: “As with any online source, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible; see also our General Disclaimer page.”[20] Furthermore, when examining the history of articles that are to guide readers who are interested in citing Wikipedia, references to a proposed system of certification frequently appear and vanish. Such a system has never been a part of Wikipedia in the seven years of its existence, and is the main reason for Larry Sanger’s resignation from the project and establishment of Citizendium.

While students often express outrage and claims of censorship when they learn of professors or departments forbidding the use of Wikipedia as a citable source in papers, the Wikipedia community is generally understanding, if a bit disappointed. However, when Jimmy Wales told a group of students that he had no sympathy for them when they failed a paper because they used Wikipedia as a source, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s headline was “Wikipedia Founder Discourages Academic Use of His Creation.”[21] Such a characterization shows that, at least for the Chronicle, the only possible use of Wikipedia in an academic setting is as a reliable source that could be cited in papers.

So what? All we have shown is that academics and Wikipedians construct two different Wikipedias: academics view anything that claims to be an encyclopedia in terms of its value as a reference, and Wikipedians often have a radically different conception of their project and how it should be judged. Obviously, we should not assume that the academics are wrong and Wikipedians are right simply by virtue of the Wikipedians knowing their project better, just like we should not assume, apropos science, that social constructivists are wrong and scientists are right for the same reason. Instead of framing this issue around who actually represents Wikipedia correctly, we should instead interrogate the conditions of possibility for this disconnect in the first place. If the Wikipedian community generally understands that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and should not be definitively cited in papers, then why has the debate over Wikipedia’s status as a reliable source emerged in academia? Why are there two Wikipedias: one literally created by Wikipedians and not deemed to be a reliable source, and the other co-constructed by two opposing factions in academia despite the warnings from the source of the controversy?

In order to answer this, we must return to my personal experience. I must confess that I may have a conflict of interest, as I saw myself as a Wikipedian long before I saw myself as an academic. Granted, I was producing knowledge in a the academic fashion long before Wikipedia was even founded, but I saw my essays on Shakespeare for English class and my lab experiments for Chemistry class more as artificial hurtles as opposed to works that contributed to a grand conversation of knowledge. However, I have been a part of Wikipedia for some time now.

I also come from a technical background, which assuredly affects how I see the encyclopedia. From age 11 when I learned the BASIC programming language until my freshman year in college, I was sure I wanted to program computers for the rest of my life. I was heavily involved with what can be described as “nerd culture,” and was a passionate advocate of the Open Source Software movement. Therefore, when I look at Wikipedia’s historical predecessors, I see Project Gutenberg, the pre-Internet digital repository that made public domain documents (the first was the U.S. Constitution) available to other computers connected to the Department of Defense’s ARPANET. I see the GNU/Linux project, a rather successful attempt to create a free operating system entirely built by volunteers. I also see WikiWikiWeb, the first website which allowed any user to edit any page. I see Slashdot, a user-written technology news website, and Kuro5hin, which took Slashdot’s model and gave full editorial control to their visitors, who voted on which stories should be published. In terms of people, I see Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Ward Cunningham, and Lawrence Lessig among others as integral in Wikipedia’s formation.

Now that I am in academia (and especially in the humanities), I see a much different progression. I see line of thought that intends to document the objective world following Roger Bacon, Auguste Comte, and Denis Diderot. However, I also see a radical critical nature in Wikipedia that has striking similarities to the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, who questioned the existence of universal truth and established authorities of knowledge. I see Edmund Husserl, whose phenomenological approach bracketed out questions of truth in relation to the external world. I see the work of Jean-François Lyotard, who criticized the existence of meta-narratives, or universal attempts to explain the world in a positivist fashion. I see Michel Foucault, who delegitimized existing historical and scientific narratives and favored an approach to knowledge production that focused on creating problems as opposed to solving them. I see Jacques Derrida, whose differance embraced the multiplicity of meanings present in a text. I finally see Bruno Latour, whose social study of science questioned scientific inquiry by showing how the output of scientific effort is materially affected by the technosocial institutions. In terms of schools of thought, I see social constructivism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, and critical theory as the philosophical basis of many of Wikipedia’s assumptions.

These are two radically different ways of seeing the same entity, especially considering that those who are heavily grounded in one area more than likely not aware of the other narrative, as I was before my entrance into the so-called postmodern humanities. However, are we already making an error in stating that these two narratives – one the story of institutions and the other a story of theories – are focusing on the same entity? After some thought, it is clear that these two narratives are constructing two radically different subjects of inquiry. It is the same process by which academia’s Wikipedia and Wikipedia’s Wikipedia were constructed. In fact, they are the same opposing Wikipedias.

I now see that my conversations with academics I described at the beginning were more influenced by the statement, “I come from philosophy, anthropology, rhetoric, and Science and Technology Studies” than “I study Wikipedia.” And this is because academics, like all people, understand new things in terms of what they have seen before. In this case, I was completely oblivious to the fact that most academics had lived through a conflict that had quieted down a few years before I began my foray into academia: the Science Wars. When most academics see Wikipedia, they do not see it as an emerging organization that owes its existence more to the open source software community than anything else. Most academics, I suspect, frame it as the newest battle in a war that they thought they had played to a draw: the Science Wars.

The Science Wars was (some may say are, but most place the event in the past tense) a series of disputes across academia in the late 20^th century regarding the objectivity and authority of science, particularly the “hard” or natural sciences. The postmodernists claimed that science, like everything else, was merely a social construction and provided no privileged access to the world. In fact, these scholars claimed, science often was complicit with various nefarious ideologies, specifically patriarchy, militarism, and capitalism. The scientific realists countered by claiming that the scientific method was the only way to arrive at objective knowledge, and that the postmodernists were merely relativists who lacked the scientific knowledge to even understand the subject they were critiquing.

Bruno Latour’s 1987 book Science in Action was an influential publication in the Science Wars. In it, he studies scientific theories as they are being developed, and concludes that scientific controversies are settled not because scientists in the winning camp were objectively correct and had the facts right, but rather that scientific proof is more a performance than anything else, with scientists acting primarily as “spokespersons” for various theories and discoveries. In fact, Latour claims that “Laboratories are now powerful enough to define reality”[22], and that most of us cannot challenge this reality as we do not have the skill to perform as a spokesperson in a laboratory or in scientific literature.

Many of the positions by social constructivists were along similar lines. Some scholars, such as Nancy Tuana, began to investigate science by “documenting the ways in which scientific theories have reinforced sexist and/or racist biases.”[23] She cites the work of McClintock and Lorraine Code, who prefer a science that is more relational and based on accepting that “our knowledge of nature will always be partial, always changing, always in process.”[24] Stanley Aronwitz critiqued science’s exclusive nature and argued for a “a new scientific citizenship in which democratic forms of decision making were shared between the scientific community and the public” that opposed the status-quo “democracy [that] is only appropriate for the few.”[25]

The climax of the Science Wars came with the publication of the Winter 1996 issue of Social Text, a journal published by Duke University that could be placed definitively in the postmodern camp. This issue was focused on the Science Wars, and contained many passionate criticisms of scientific realism. Among them was a paper titled “Transgressing the Boundries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” by Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University who argued that recent developments in Quantum Gravity “has profound implications for the content of a future postmodern and liberatory science.”[26] The only problem with the paper was that Sokal claimed it was a hoax, an experiment to see if “a leading North American journal of cultural studies [would] … publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”[27] He claimed that its publication showed that the social constructivist approach had few, if any, claims to authoritative knowledge.

Richard Rorty characterizes the controversy as one between traditional scientists and those who:

think that “postmodern philosophy” — roughly, the anti-metaphysical doctrines common to Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida — has “unmasked” science. Starting with the claim that homosexuality, the Negro race, and womanliness are social constructions, they go on to suggest that quarks and genes probably are too. “Ideology” and “power,” they say, have infiltrated sterile laboratories and lurk between the lines of arcane journals of mathematical physics.[28]

However, Rorty’s essay is not titled “Phony Science Wars” for nothing, as he concludes by calling the Science Wars “in part a product of deep and long-lasting clashes of intuition, but mostly … just media hype — journalists inciting intellectuals to diabolize one another.” When faced with this conception of the Science Wars, it is no surprise that academics in the past few years have divided over Wikipedia as they did. Wikipedia, as an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, easily can be seen an attempt to validate the social constructivist approach to knowledge production. Like the alternative forms of science proposed during the Science Wars, Wikipedia is portrayed as more transparent, more democratic, and more accessible than scientific modes of knowledge production. It is no wonder that when academia heard about Wikipedia, they heard “that Callicles’ mobs are coming to ransack their laboratories,”[29] to take from Bruno Latour’s characterization of the response by scientists to his own theories.

Even though we can point to the Science Wars as a way that academics frame Wikipedia’s place in the academy, we have yet to interrogate the conditions of possibility for this conception of Wikipedia. What does it mean to ask whether or not Wikipedia should be cited in an academic paper? What fundamental assumptions are we making when we inquire into Wikipedia’s reliability as if it actually matters?

To ask if Wikipedia is reliable is an inherently relational question that it presupposes another one: reliable according to whom? In this case, Wikipedia is being compared to a source we already consider authoritative; or more precisely, it is being compared to a source whose authority is not questioned in our current society. This has generally been the Encyclopedia Britannica, and most of the studies on Wikipedia’s reliability have taken articles on the same subject from both of these encyclopedias and compared the number of errors. In this case, we are not actually asking if Wikipedia is reliable, but rather asking if it corresponds to Britannica which is assumed to be reliable. However, it seems that we have mischaracterized the Nature study, which did not compare Wikipedia to Britannica, but compared Wikipedia and Britannica to the world and detailed how many errors each had. To ask if Wikipedia is reliable is therefore ask if it accurately reflects the world – Nature instead of Nature.

Yet Latour proves insightful in showing how this question is rather unanswerable and rests on a particularly frustrating philosophical foundation. As he claims in Science in Action, “we can never use the outcome – Nature – to explain how and why a controversy has been settled,”[30] as Nature is something that is produced, a result at which science arrives. Instead of looking at science as a way of coming to objective facts about the external world, Latour describes science as an activity that generates its own objectivity. Specifically, he claims that “Laboratories are powerful enough to define reality.”[31] Applying these insights to Wikipedia, it is clear that to ask if it is reliable is therefore to likewise ask if it generates its own objectivity; in Latour’s terminology, it is to ask if it is powerful enough to define reality.

Yet before we answer this question definitively, let us take one more step back and examine the implications of this question. When we ask if Wikipedia is powerful enough to define reality, when we treat it as a self-generative system of knowledge production, what essential claims about not simply Wikipedia but knowledge as well are we making? For this, we turn to Martin Heidegger, whose theories of technological enframing reveal much about what we are excluding from this line of questioning.

With Heidegger’s early philosophy, we get a concept of being-in-the-world as the foundation of metaphysics. The human condition is one in which we are thrown into the world and attempt to make sense of it through our various projects. It is on the surface a deeply individualistic and material conception of being that rejects any possibility of a singular, transcendental ontology in lieu of an incessant becoming that is continually a problem for itself. This grounds Heidegger’s later work on modern technology, which he claims fundamentally changes how we conceptualize the world on an ontological level.

For Heidegger, it is impossible for an individual (whom he refers to as Dasein) to overcome the conditions of the world. Specifically, he states in Being and Time that:

The primordiality of a state of Being does not coincide with the simplicity and uniqueness of an ultimate structural element. The ontological source of Dasein’s Being is not ‘inferior’ to what springs from it, but towers above it in power from the onset; in the field of ontology, any ‘springing-from’ is degeneration. It we penetrate to the ‘source’ ontologically, we do not come to things which are ontically obvious for the ’common understanding’; but the questionable character of everything obvious opens up for us.[32]

Here, Heidegger rejects any philosophical attempt to place the Being of humanity over the conditions of its existence (the world). In some sense, it is the claim that we need the world far more than the world needs us, and any structural system of thought wherein we produce for ourselves the possibility of freedom over the world (specifically Hegelianism) is fundamentally flawed. However, Heidegger was not opposed to a social conception of the world; in fact, he spends an entire section of Being and Time on being-with others and claims that “Being-with is an existential constituent of being-in-the-world,”[33] He states that “So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being.” However, he immediately follows with the claim that “This cannot be conceived as a summative result of the occurrence of several ‘subjects’” as this leads to an “’inconsiderate’ Being-with [that] ‘recons] with the Others without seriously ‘counting on them’ or without even wanting to ‘have anything to do with them’” (125).

Heidegger’s problem with conceptualizing being-in-the-world in terms of the social (that is, with intersubjectivity) is that it is on a fundamentally different level than individual interpersonal relations. Instead of focusing on an other through a process of empathy and care, we shift to what Heidegger calls the “dictatorship of the ‘they’” (126), in which:

We take pleasures and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasures; we read, see, and judge about literature as they see and judge; likewise, we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. The ‘they’, which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of everydayness.”[34]

The problem therefore with a conception of metaphysics as necessarily intersubjective is that it leads not to an egalitarian, non-hierarchical community of shared practice in which everyone offers up their own version being-in-the-world and then compromises with each other. To be blunt, Heidegger claims that most of us are too lazy or otherwise preoccupied to even figure out our own being-in-the-world, much less offer up an alternative version to others. Instead, we simply take from the dominant mode of thinking.

Much later, in The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger builds on certain parts of this framework in order to critique what he calls enframing. Our mode of being-in-the-world for the later Heidegger is one in which we continually reveal the world through our various imaginative projects, as he explains:

Whoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial chalice reveals what is to be brought forth … This revealing gathers together in advance the aspect and the matter of ship or house, with a view to the finished thing envisaged as completed, and from this gathering determines the manner of its creation. … It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing-forth.[35]

The problem with the essence of what he calls “modern technology”[36] is that it structures how we reveal the world in a rather exclusive and dangerous way. For example, Heidegger shows that after a hydroelectric power plant was built on the Rhine, we conceptualized the river in a radically different way. He claims that we see the river “namely a water-power supplier” and that this “derives from the essence of the power station.”[37] It was not the mere adoption of technology in relation to nature that caused us to view the river as “something at our command,”[38] as there have been several bridges that were built in relation to the river that did not lead to this ontological framing. Furthermore, it was simply the specific introduction of a power plant that led to this revealing, but rather what he calls “the essence of technology [which] is by no means anything technological.”[39]

What Heidegger criticizes is an entire system of modern thought he calls enframing, or “the way in which the actual reveals itself as standing-reserve.”[40] Instead of seeing a river, for example, we only see what the river can provide for us, namely electricity. If the river for some reason loses its current, this is seen as undesirable simply because it stops providing electricity. Something that is revealed as a standing reserve is not even on the level of objectification, as objects are disparate and be distinguished from one another. The standing-reserve simply reveals the world as pure instrumentality, and Heidegger warns that “So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain transfixed in the will to master it.”[41]

When asking whether or not Wikipedia is now powerful enough to define reality, we should first pause, as this question is complicit in Heidegger’s enframing. In asking if Wikipedia is a possible producer of reality, we are in effect asking how we can use it for our own purposes. Specifically, we are asking how Wikipedia can instrumentally function epistemologically, which forecloses its other possibilities. The objection is not that we have delegated reality to the mere realm of the social, to the whim of the masses. Nor is it that we have merely changed masters and still remain shackled to a system of knowledge production that masks certain potentially harmful ideologies. Rather, what have we done to Wikipedia in the name of reality? We only experience Wikipedia as a standing-reserve, one for producing (or failing to produce) objectless citations that, independent of the article they reference, can universally fit into an existing network of knowledge production. This mode of enframing Wikipedia as a reality producer leads us back into a rather problematic inquiry; specifically, as Heidegger claims:

Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares nature as an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve.[42]

Steven Colbert’s famous lampooning of Wikipedia, in which he coined the term wikiality to designate reality according to Wikipedia, can be seen not as a criticism of Wikipedia, but rather of those whose conceptualization of the project has been destined in this fashion. It must be stressed that this does not mean we cannot come to some conclusion as to Wikipedia’s reliability or authority as a reference work. In fact, for academics, this is an unavoidable question that must be answered, as academic scholarship is inherently based on the reliability and authority of sources. The problem is in asking this question as if it matters for Wikipedia’s sake; that is, as if Wikipedia is somehow good or bad, worthy or unworthy based on its answer. In looking at the project this way, it forecloses a fantastic possibility: that we could be a part of a system of knowledge production in which its relation to its own truth is not that of the social constructivists, the scientific realists, or anyone in between who offers some sort of epistemological compromise. Rather, Wikipedia enables a frighteningly wonderful system of knowledge production that gives a rather startling indifference as to questions of its own instrumentality, reliability, and truth claims.

However, it is not that certain fields “own” various topics of study, forbidding any other discipline entry.  Economics will “allow” a worldwide financial crisis to be studied by political science (what are the political ramifications?), sociology (how are various social structures affected?), rhetoric (how do people describe and argue about the crisis?), history (how does this crisis compare to previous ones?), media studies (how does the media represent and influence the crisis?), psychology (how is the crisis affecting people’s psyche?), or more disciplines with their own unique perspective on the topic.  The point is that while all of these disciplines have something meaningful to say about a worldwide financial crisis, only economics has the ability to refer to it in a naturalized state.   The perspectives of the other disciplines are just that, perspectives, with no legitimacy outside of their particular disciplinary lens.  When not studying their “own” topic, these disciplines are constituted within a plane of existence that keeps them on the periphery.  A legal analogy is apt: it is not that each discipline owns certain topics, but that they have original jurisdiction over them.

This is not just the case with economics – any other well-established discipline holds original jurisdiction over certain topics, making analysis from outside disciplines always-already marginalized.  If one wishes to study, say, the economics of media, there are either two options: first, completely ignore the existing academic literature on media from media studies and treat the topic as raw input for disciplinary analysis; or second, attempt to perform some sort of “transdisciplinary” analysis that holistically incorporates the theories, methodologies, practices, techniques, and beliefs of media studies with those of economics.

There are both inherent and disciplinary problems with any academic study of Wikipedia.  The inherent issue is that Wikipedia does not lend itself to this system in which there is one discipline with original jurisdiction and an endless number of effectual disciplinary perspectives.   Rather, Wikipedia’s constituent elements are distinct but interrelated elements or topics which each have their own “home” discipline.  Starting at a very technical level, Wikipedia runs upon a specific type of software which organizes data in a peculiar manner.  Much work has been done in Computer Science about the computational “ontology,” or the way in which data are organized and stored.   Many in this field have also analyzed issues of collaboration, developing quantitative models of how contributions to the site emerge and develop.

Some of these authors have linked these models to various social or political theories, although these are largely speculative and based on correlations, not causations.   This is because the discipline of Computer Science only has original jurisdiction over well-formed quantitative models of data or computation, not social and political theories.  Because of this, any attempt to analyze the social or political aspects of Wikipedia within these disciplines is necessarily speculative and perspective, as the researcher is effectively turning to other disciplines (political science, sociology) in a tangential manner when making such conclusions.  These articles generally make a well-formed Computer Science conclusion about data or software, and then use that conclusion as the premise for a much shorter secondary analysis of Wikipedia within another discipline that is not fully deployed.

The much celebrated “Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia” (Priedhorsky et al, 2007) is an exemplar of this type of study.  The authors craft an “empirically grounded” (259) classification schema for value and perform a rigorous quantitative analysis regarding the variables that affect their concept of value.  The body of their paper includes elements of this discipline: three research questions with proper methodology sections, well-defined formula for their variables and metrics, and eight charts and graphs that illustrate their quantitative analysis.  The authors skillfully craft these elements into a scientifically-sound conclusion made in the fourth-to-last paragraph based on their work: “1/10th of 1% of editors contributed nearly half of the value” (267) to Wikipedia articles.  However, this is only their penultimate conclusion, as they use it to make a different kind of argument in their final paragraphs.  Their tone shifts away from the scientific as they argue that:

because a very small proportion of Wikipedia editors account for most  of its value, it is important to keep them happy, for example by ensuring that they gain appropriate visibility and status.  However, turnover is inevitable in any online community.  Wikipedia should also develop policies, tools, and user interfaces to bring in newcomers, teach them community norms, and help them become effective editors. (267-8).

For those in the social sciences and the humanities, there may be an impulse to criticize such a conclusion as pure speculation, given that their methodology and variables did not focus on norms, socialization, or other social processes. However, to do so would be to ignore the complex web of disciplinary relations at work in such an article.  Their final paragraphs should be viewed as a well-intentioned attempt to make certain conclusions that their discipline could not make because it does not have original jurisdiction over the matter.  If their task was solely to make a solid recommendation to the Wikipedian Community regarding norms and socialization, they would have inevitably failed because of the context within which their article was constructed and deployed.   A methodology that incorporated a social science approach would have been necessary to authoritatively make such conclusions, given that sociology has original jurisdiction over the social.  However, as they insinuate in their conclusion, this was not their main goal; instead, they see the main benefit of their article defining a measurable concept of value with respect to Wikipedia, “set[ting] the scientific study of Wikipedia … on a much firmer basis than ever before” (267).  In other words, their contribution is to the computational study of data, not to the social study of computational systems.  The speculative nature of their social conclusions are not properly constructed and defended, but they do not have to be as this is not the purpose of the article.  In short, within this disciplinary matrix, is natural that we see paper as an excellent practice of computer science research and an awful practice of sociology research.

With this in mind, we turn our attention to the constituent elements of Wikipedia that do “lend themselves” (i.e. have been naturalized) into the more socially-focused disciplines.  In contrast to the Computer Science approach which sees Wikipedia as software and data, this approach sees Wikipedia as community, society, and politics.  The disciplines of sociology and political science have original jurisdiction over these topics, as they are the academic fields that are can make well-founded conclusions about them.  An exemplary work that is informed by the kind of computer science methods illustrated in Priedhorsky’s article but expanded to a social science methodology is “Community, Consensus, Coercion, Control: CS*W or How Policy Mediates Mass Participation” by Kriplean, et al.  This work is a collaboration between academics in Computer Science and Information Studies, as well as a researcher in Hewlett-Packard’s Information Dynamics Lab.

The article presents a methodology that is similar to the variable-based statistical methods used by Priedhorsky.  After describing Wikipedia in detail (making sure to give a preliminary description of its policies, or codified norms), the authors present a schema for categorizing discussions in Wikipedia in relation to policy.  They present well-defined variables and methods for such an analysis, and draw a figure that illustrates this method in practice.  However, this is where Kriplean departs from Priedhorsky: the statistical methodology is used to identify several discussions which are then analyzed qualitatively, presented as a series of “vignettes” (172).  In doing so, they squarely place this section of the article within the discipline of sociology, stating their intention to use a Grounded Theory approach to study “power dynamics at work within the ambiguity of the policy environment” (171).

They begin by tentatively assuming that what they call the “policy environment” facilitates the resolution of disputes through the invocation and negotiation of these codified norms.  They then use the vignettes to illustrate many different disputes, not all of which use policy as a resolution mechanism.  From this, they construct a typology of “power plays” (172), showing that although some disputes are negotiated through the invocation and interpretation of policy (e.g. the policy environment), others are based on non-policy factors.  In particular, they note the way in which some disputes were resolved by reference to an editor’s reputation or the resolution of a similar debate on a related article, which are not based in policy.  In the penultimate section “Design Implications,” they use these conclusions to argue that the software upon which Wikipedia runs should be changed to better facilitate these non-policy factors that influence dispute resolution.  Specifically, they tentatively suggest a reputation system and a better way of tracking previous debates.  Their ultimate conclusion is that the policy environment is a way in which important “articulation work” (175) is performed, and the software needs to be updated to better facilitate articulation that occurs but is not defined as part of the policy environment.

Kriplean’s methods and conclusions are radically different from Priedhorsky’s.  Priedhorsky uses variables and statistics to construct a computational categorization schema that produces a scientific fact about users and data, which is transformed into a speculative set of social conclusions.  In contrast, Kriplean uses variables and statistics to construct a computational categorization schema that is used bring forth qualitative data, which is analyzed in order to develop a social categorization schema, which in turn gives rise to sociological and design-oriented conclusions.  From a sociological perspective, Kriplean’s article is far superior than Priedhorsky’s; however, it is far inferior from a computer science perspective.  This is because Kriplean’s article only uses Computer Science to develop a computational ontological schema, not to produce computational facts like Priedhorsky.  Despite the fact that they both draw from Computer Science, the conclusions made in the first part of Kriplean’s article about topics that Computer Science has original jurisdiction over are not as meaningful on their own as Priedhorsky’s conclusions.  However, Kriplean’s Computer Science conclusions are fed into a Sociologically-influenced methodology, which allows them to make solid conclusions in a domain that Priedhorsky could not: norms and social facts.  Finally, Kriplean’s article is situated within the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), which allows them to make conclusions regarding design, a topic that CSCW has original jurisdiction over.

We have identified three sets of constituent elements of Wikipedia, each of which has been situated within the original jurisdiction of a field or discipline: first, the software and data, which has its home in Computer Science; second, norms and social facts, which belong to Sociology; and third, design issues, under the purview of Computer Supported Cooperative Work.  Priedhorsky’s article was solely within the context of Computer Science and therefore failed to make solid conclusions about social facts, a topic that the discipline of Computer Science does not have original jurisdiction over.  In contrast, Kriplean’s article was a collaboration between Computer Science, Sociology, and CSCW.  This meant that Computer Science allowed conclusions about computational ontologies and schemas, Sociology allowed conclusions about social norms and facts, and CSCW allowed conclusions about design issues.  Kriplean’s article could therefore say more about Wikipedia than Priedhorsky’s, because it deployed three different disciplines in order to make solid conclusions about three different kinds of topics.

However, these three constituent elements are only a small fraction of that which is internal to Wikipedia.  Much has been written on the economic model of Wikipedia, asking questions about the organization and division of labor, for example.  Elections are held on a regular basis for various high-level administrative positions, and political scientists have analyzed them using the same tools and techniques for analyzing political elections.  The psychological aspect of Wikipedian contributors is often discussed in relation to the motivation and personality of editors.  The discourse of the Wikipedian community has been analyzed from various theoretical perspectives, both inside and out of communication studies.  Roy Rosenweig’s “Can History Be Open Source?” looked at Wikipedia as history, comparing the methods and issues in Wikipedia with those in History.  Philosophers have examined the epistemological model present in Wikipedia, comparing it to various philosophical positions (Rodríguez 2007).  From cultural studies, issues of multiculturalism in Wikipedia have been analyzed in detail (Pfeil et al, 2006).  Wikipedia’s model of jurisprudence has also been analyzed; in fact, one the first academic articles about Wikipedia was a comparison of various free knowledge projects to the U.S. legal system (Benkler 2002).

Each of these articles is an example of a work in which a particular element of Wikipedia is analyzed using a disciplinary framework that has original jurisdiction over the element in question.  However, this disjointedness creates problems when connections need to be made between topics.  While Kriplean’s article does a good job at connecting three distinct topics, this does not provide an exhaustive look at Wikipedia.  We can imagine an ideal study that would incorporate issues of software development, design, social norms, law, elections, organizational structures, social structures, interpersonal relations, multiculturalism, cultural practices, division of labor, discourse, history, subjectivity, epistemology, philosophical ontology, computational ontology, and back to software development and design as the cycle repeats itself.  All of these issues influence each other, and in more complex ways than this simple chain would suggest.

Solutions to the problem of epistemology are not merely sociological, normative, psychological, legal, discursive, technological, and subjective; in addition, working out a solution involves working out a solution to these issues as well.  How the community comes to terms with the question of what proper knowledge is simultaneously contains within it issues of what the proper social order ought to be for regulating and enforcing that epistemology, how to reconcile dissidents while keeping them motivated, what the proper way of phrasing such an epistemology ought to be, what technological space ought to be created in order to best facilitate such a discussion, who ought to be included and excluded from such discussions,  and more.

When analyzing an entity or event in the so-called “real world” – for example, a presidential election – it is possible to perform a disciplinary analysis that re-appropriates the topic within the original jurisdiction of the chosen discipline.  A rhetorician can choose to ignore (or bracket out) questions of economics, focusing only on what the rhetoric of politicians and pundits reveals, conceals, and so forth.  Issues of economics may emerge in such a rhetorical analysis, but they are taken away from the disciplines that have original jurisdiction over them and recontextualized within the discipline of rhetoric.  This is only possible because the rhetorician takes for granted the relationship between elections and economics: that during elections, politicians categorically talk about various political issues, and the economy is one of those issues which is discussed.

A psychologist can study a presidential election by measuring how people feel about various candidates or issues and for what reasons.  This study may reveal, for example, that people who are more interested in politics are angrier than people who are not.  The psychologist is only able to make such a conclusion by taking for granted the relationship between people and the election: that people have various levels of interest in the election, and we know what we mean when we say ‘people’, ‘interest’, and ‘election’.  Such an assumption seems entirely unproblematic, and it most assuredly is within the context of American culture.  However, in a culture like Wikipedia where the relationship between people and elections (as well as the concept of ‘people’ and ‘elections’) is more problematic, far more theoretical work must go into a similarly-structured research project.

This is because one cannot simply enter Wikipedia and import the categories of ‘people’ and ‘elections’ as they have been deployed within American culture.  While these have been negotiated and solidified in one cultural context, they are still underdeveloped in the Wikipedian cultural context.  For example, in American culture, it seems pedantic to ask what an election is and only ‘academic’ to ask who counts as a person – these notions are well-defined and entirely unproblematic within a certain cultural context.  In Wikipedia however, what counts as an election is an essential question, given that the community explicitly claims on many different high-profile pages that they are not a democracy nor do they vote.  However, certain events (Arbitration Committee Elections) are declared to be ‘elections’ and from an outsider’s perspective, look strangely similar to an election in which people vote on candidates.   Other events with the a similar structure (Requests for Adminship) are explicitly declared to not be elections, even though there are what appear to an outsider as candidates who may or may not receive a certain position after things that look like votes are cast by people who look like voters, who in turn are regulated by criteria that look like voter eligibility rules.  The question as to what an election is has not been as naturalized in Wikipedia as it has in the United States.

Similarly, the question as to what a person is has a similar level of ambiguity in Wikipedia with respect to American culture.  In the United States, the definition of a person obviously differs, but each of these definitions are well-defined and function equally well for the researcher’s purpose.  It does not matter if for the purposes of the psychological study, a ‘person’ is defined a human being, a resident (legal or illegal), a legal resident, a U.S. citizen, an adult, an (in)eligible voter, a (un)registered voter, or a (un)likely voter.  Each of these definitions are distinguishable and unproblematic in the psychologist’s research, and can even be used to make conclusions (i.e., likely voters are more angry than unlikely voters, who are more angry that unregistered voters).  In Wikipedia, this concept is far more problematic, as no unified conception of, say, an (in)active editor exists.  If a psychologist performed a study on elections and the emotions of people in Wikipedia, there would be no taken for granted categorization schema which defines the conditions under which a person is.  Is someone a person if they have ‘voted’ anonymously, that is, without an account?  What if they have registered but their ‘vote’ is the first contribution they have made?  Some in the Wikipedian community claim that these people are not to be treated as people, but as ‘sockpuppets’ – multiple hidden accounts that are controlled by a single human being and used to give one person more than one voice.  Others disagree, and argue for giving anonymous and newly-registered contributors just as much weight as well-established registered users. This stands in contrast to the American political system, which has a solid conception of a ‘registered voter,’ even though the specific standards of voter registration vary from county to county.

The difference between research in the so-called real world and in Wikipedia is that the real world is held together by taken for granted categories and concepts that are not as solidified in Wikipedia.  However, this should not be taken as an indication that Wikipedia needs explanation in a way that real world institutions do not; in other words, our task is not to solidify these categories and concepts so that we can analyze Wikipedia using the same kinds of techniques and methods developed for real world entities and events.  What we must instead realize is that Wikipedia provides a unique site for analysis in which assumptions and relations traditionally taken for granted in the real world exist in a problematized state.  However, it must be recognized that this is not due to any essential property of Wikipedia, meaning that we must reject the assumption that Wikipedia has some special characteristic which makes it at its essence a space that problematizes these traditionally taken for granted relationships.   This means that we must not treat Wikipedia as a space in which all conceptual relationships are always-already problematized; rather, it is simply a space in which some traditionally reified relationships have been made problematic.

On one aisle, we have disciplinary analyses which import theories and categories which are well-functioning (i.e. taken for granted) in the real world but are problematized in Wikipedia.  This form of research tends to gloss over those inconsistencies, resulting in an analysis of Wikipedia that is unproblematic for the researcher but ignorant of how such research contradicts local understanding present in the project.  On the other aisle, there is the unreflective research that attempts to give a localized account of how the project operates.  This form of research substitutes one misstep for another, choosing to reify the taken for granted assumptions and relations developed in the Wikipedia community as an alternative to reifying those taken for granted in the real world.  The solution is not to try and find some sort of third way or middle ground, but instead to alternate between these perspectives.  It is a simultaneous analysis of how Wikipedians see the real world and how the real world sees Wikipedia.

Instead of trying to determine through some sort of technique or formula of bringing forth the hidden assumptions and relations each side takes for granted, this work will operate at the intersection between an academic researcher’s account and what is known as a member’s account.  We will posit what Bruno Latour calls a “symmetry” between these two accounts: we will give neither researchers nor Wikipedians full authority to speak about what Wikipedia is, nor will we assume that either side’s assumptions are valid at the expense of the other’s.  This means that we cannot use some well-functioning theory or ideology in the real world (e.g. Communism) to explain a seemingly-congruent observation of Wikipedia.  We will not assume that Wikipedia can be explained by already-existing theories or concepts, but we will also not assume that new theories or concepts ought to be constructed in order to explain Wikipedia.

In fact, the task is not to explain Wikipedia in any sense.  That would be as futile as attempting to explain American society, with all its contradictory (sub)cultures, norms, institutions, categories, mythologies, and theories that are held together by a set of taken for granted assumptions.  The task is also not to reveal or problematize these taken for granted assumptions, as if they were evils to be purged.  We instead aim to demonstrate how Wikipedia, with all its (sub)cultures, norms, ideologies, discourses, institutions, mythologies, economics, philosophies, categories, and theories, is held together by a different but just as important set of taken for granted assumptions and relations.

This approach stands in opposition to the structuralist position, which posits universal features, elements, or tendencies present in all societies and then attempts to describe a particular society in terms of these structures.  Examples of these universal structures include the previously-mentioned (sub)cultures, norms, ideologies, discourses, institutions, mythologies, economics, philosophies, categories, and theories.  Our task is not to articulate the norms, ideologies, discourses, or other structural elements of Wikipedia.  We are not to show what mythologies or philosophies compel Wikipedians to action.  Concepts like the economy or the social structure – which make sense in our contemporary society – are not to be unproblematically imported into Wikipedia.  The folly of this is best shown by an essay on Wikipedia that responds to the charges of Communism that are frequently leveled against the project.  Ten internally coherent yet collectively contradictory “points of view” on the subject of economics are made, all of which defend Wikipedia while supporting different ideological worldviews.  These include: “Wikipedia does not endorse any value system,” “Wikipedia is like Communism, and that’s a good thing,” “Wikipedia is not like Communism because it is voluntary,” “Wikipedia fuels the free market … [and] engages in competition,” “Wikipedia is like a charity,” “Wikipedia is like Anarchism,” “Wikipedia is a hobby,” and “Who cares, as long as it works?”

The point of the list is to show that concepts like economic ideologies make sense within a certain context, but quickly turn unintelligible within they are used to describe something like Wikipedia.  Concepts like Communism require a coherent understanding of other concepts, like an economy and a state, each of which in turn require a coherent understanding of other concepts, like property, value, labor, and exchange for an economy and sovereignty, authority, rule, and power for a state.  We could go one level further, but there is no need given that all eight of these dependent concepts are well-defined with respect to real-world nation-states but problematic within the context of Wikipedia.  While a Communist, a liberal democrat, a libertarian capitalist, and an anarchist would most likely agree that Cuba is more Communist than the United States, these four individuals could each see Wikipedia as furthering their own political-economic ideologies.  This is due to the fact that these concepts and relations have a taken for granted status in the real world, but an incoherence in the Wikipedian context.  This allows concepts like “the state” in Wikipedia to be described as authoritarian, liberal-democratic, minimalist, or non-existent.  However, we should be wary of claiming that this incoherence is fundamental or due to some essential nature of Wikipedia.  All that has been observed is an incoherence, which could be explained due to various factors, including the technical/material conditions of Wikipedia’s existence, its various normative commitments, the relative youth of the community, or any other number of factors.  It is not our task to say which.

Instead, we will take this incoherence as our unit of analysis in our study of Wikipedia.  We will be examining the way in which these taken for granted, well-settled concepts are imported into Wikipedia and made problematic.  In order to facilitate such a task, we will play the role of the anthropological stranger whose mission is to interrogate the conditions of possibility for the seemingly-universal concepts like discourse, governance, power, subjectivity, and norms.   However, unlike the structural anthropologist, we do not expect coherent articulations of these concepts as we search for their explanations.  Instead, we embrace the confusion as a way of making such concepts problematic.  We anticipate that such an exploration will show us that in referring to what we call discourse or norms, for example, we are making certain assumptions that hold within our society but fall apart within Wikipedia.

In this way, we are able to sidestep the entire disciplinary matrix that naturalizes certain topics within certain fields.  Thus we avoid the original jurisdiction issue that initially required us to split up Wikipedia into various constituent elements, each of which must be analyzed with distinct methods, techniques, and theories.  Instead of positing a list of elements and systematically analyzing them from their own “home” discipline’s perspective (motivations from psychology, governance from political science, norms from sociology, epistemology from philosophy, and so forth), we take such a framework to be problematic.  In doing so, we can reveal the contradictions that emerge when a set of internally-coherent practices, theories, methods, techniques, and beliefs are deployed in a foreign context.  The questions that are to be asked therefore involve an attempt to overlay the project within certain frames.  The point is not to make everything fit, but to see what is remains on the periphery.

Download Words and Things: A De-Re-Sub-Post-Construction of Rhizomatic and Non-Arborescent Stratum in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (PDF, 398 KB)

Abstract: Wikipedia – “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” – has become an exemplar of the so-called Web 2.0, an emerging Internet-based media space that emphasizes collaboration and free production of knowledge. Nearly any individual who visits the website can edit nearly any article in any way desired; one can fix an incorrect fact or grammatical error as well as vandalize and slander. The project is often depicted in one of two different ways: first, as a harmonious, unstructured anarchy in which order mysteriously arises; and second, as a dystopic state-of-nature in which truth is relative and only subject to the masses. In response, this paper rejects both of those depictions and instead focuses on a Foucauldian account of power relations in the on-line encyclopedia. Using Foucault’s methodology as developed in The Archaeology of Knowledge, a conflict over the existence of an article on one of Wikipedia’s competitors - Encyclopedia Dramatica, a satirical and frequently obscene parody of Wikipedia – is analyzed. This paper works through Foucault’s method of bringing a discourse’s “discursive regularities” to light by beginning with the most basic question of discourse: What is recognized as a statement in this discursive space? This analysis is followed by the identification of how statements construct discursive objects, which in turn create enunciative modalities or subject positions, which are themselves organized around concepts. By examining both official and unofficial sources, it is shown that conflicts over content in Wikipedia are coordinated in network of organizing questions that structure these concepts. The Wikipedian discourse is therefore distinguished not due to its ideals that determine rules for content, but rather in the way in which these concepts are organized.

Download The Wikipedian Discourse (PDF, 226 kb)

This work aims to investigate the legal culture of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is written and maintained largely by volunteers. The community often places itself in strict opposition to traditional encyclopedias, which are written for profit by a select group of hired experts. Wikipedia as a whole prides itself for being an open and free repository of information, as well as an attempt at being “a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet in their own language” according to its founder, Jimmy Wales.

With over 285,000 contributors who make over six million edits per month on over five million substantial articles which consist, in total, of over one and a half billion words, Wikipedia has become somewhat of a mystery in organizational theory. The project incorporates a wide variety of opinions from users across the globe, yet disruptions to the natural order are few and far between. In fact, a study by Roy Rosenzweig showed that Wikipedia was roughly as accurate as other major encyclopedias. [1]

So what is it that keeps this community organized and on-task? If anyone has the power to edit nearly any article in any fashion, vandalism and bias could become significant problems with a system such as Wikipedia’s. To combat this inherent lawlessness, there has emerged a group of users dedicated to establishing law and order in the online encyclopedia. While their initial attempts at enforcing behavior were based on building community norms, this group of Wikipedia users has grown (in both membership and legitimacy) so much that it can be considered a sovereign government.

In the course of this investigation, frequent attention to primary sources is necessary. The hypertext medium through which both this project and Wikipedia are presented affords a unique opportunity to make constant reference to the subject matter. In lieu of charts, diagrams, or images of the community, hyperlinks will be used when directly referring to a source or example of the topic at hand. Readers are encouraged to view these links in a separate window and return to this site when examination of these sources is complete.

Introduction

On the surface, it seems that a discussion of law and government in relation to Wikipedia could be summarized in one word: non-existent. The on-line “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” has been described as a “creative anarchy,” with order only driven by the project’s tendency to display the average opinions of the intellectual herd. Popular depictions represent Wikipedia as a free-for-all in which a myriad of contributors simply espouse their own viewpoints, miraculously creating a normalized harmony out of a lawless cacophony.

This presentation of Wikipedia is incorrect, as it ignores the heavily-specialized set of rules which keep the project’s hundreds of thousands of contributors in check. Officially, there exist forty-two policies (mainly governing behavior and content) and 356 specific guidelines(mainly governing style and formatting) which all users are expected to follow if they desire to contribute to the encyclopedia.

The very fact that these rules are “official” implies that there is some entity which, to use Max Weber’s definition of government, “successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.” [2] While “physical force” is an awkward term to use when describing virtual spaces, it can be faithfully interpreted as any action that restricts a user from interacting normally in the system. For example, blocking a disruptive user from the project temporarily or permanently can be seen as the virtual equivalent of jailing or executing a lawbreaker.

In Wikipedia, there is one group of users who not only have this ability, but also exclusively retain the right to grant it to others: administrators.  Wikipedia’s administrators typically number over one-thousand, although the large majority of them are only executors of the law, allowed to temporarily ban users for violations of official policy. When disputes over official policies arise, a small subset of administrators interpret community discussion about the law authoritatively, with their decisions carrying significant consequences across Wikipedia.  This is known as “closing” an argument or determining consensus.  Finally, this government utilizes an interesting mechanism for crafting and modifying the law: consensus policymaking based on the opinions of the community at large – properly interpreted.

Identity

Like all users in Wikipedia, administrators are constituted by their username, which is inextricably linked to their user page, list of contributions, and user rank. A user page is a Wikipedia article just like any other, giving the user the ability to describe themselves in any capacity they desire. Some users describe their real world selves, often posting pictures, autobiographies, and academic or professional qualifications. Others, however, may remain pseudononymous and simply describe themselves in terms of generic traits, emphasizing their accomplishments and interests on Wikipedia. A few users choose to be nonsensical, placing seemingly-random information on their pages. Finally, many majority of users simply do not make their own user page, which is not an official requirement.

In terms of credibility, a user’s list of contributions is much more important for administrative duties than their user page. In this sense, Wikipedia is a meritocracy, as users with different levels of contribution are treated differently by administrators. When deciding if an individual should be promoted to the level of administrator, one of the main factors is both how long the user has been an active member of Wikipedia and how many edits that user makes in an average day. Candidates who are considered to have too few edits are often rejected for adminship, despite the quality of their edits or work outside of article writing.

Contribution lists are also used by administrators as a form of profiling. Official policy states that users with any history of contributive edits should be given more leniency if they violate a rule. In contrast, a user without an edit history is not afforded this privilege while users with solely negative contributions are often given harsher punishments than those without a history at all.

While a user’s list of contributions is often considered, the most important form of identity in the Wikipedian government is one’s user rank. There are seven main categories of users, which gain certain privileges as they increase in rank. At the bottom are banned users, who are forbidden from editing any pages on the site. Anonymous (non-registered) users are next, allowed to edit all pages that are not protected or semi-protected. Registered users with accounts at least three days old are allowed to edit all pages which are not protected.

Administrators are allowed to block users temporarily (up to one month), delete pages and erase their history to normal users, undelete a page previously deleted by another administrator, edit protected and semi-protected pages, and protect or semi-protect a page. As previously stated, administrators are the most common rank above normal users: approximately one-thousand users hold this rank. A user becomes an administrator after formally requesting the rank and deemed worthy by their peers through a discussion of the user’s merits. Ultimately, users with a rank of at least bureaucrat make the decision to accept or reject the user’s application based on the general opinion of the consensus.

These bureaucrats can (in addition to all administrative privileges) promote users to the admin or bureaucrat user level. This level is less common, with only twenty-three users at this level. Stewards have the previously-mentioned abilities, with the ability to promote to steward and demote any user across any Wikimedia project (which includes Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktonary, and Wikisource). There are only thirty stewards, which are nominated by the public at large annually and selected by the Wikimedia Board of Directors.

Finally, there exists a select group of users with the developer user status. These users have universal access to the entire project. They can change the code upon which Wikipedia runs, irreversibly delete articles without leaving a trace, and perform other technical tasks. These seven users are either employees of the Wikimedia Foundation or are high ranking technical developers for the software upon which Wikipedia runs (mainly MySQL and MediaWiki).

Organizational Hierarchy

In Wikipedia, the executive branch of the government is a group of about one-thousand administrators who collectively enforce the official rules and mandates made by the Wikipedian government. They exist roughly in the same capacity as police officers in most modern nation-states. These administrators are generally semi-autonomous and have individual authority to temporarily block a user from editing if they repeatedly violate certain rules. Although enforcement on this level is up to the discretion of a single admin, administrators will often discuss blocks before and after they occur. However, each officer is somewhat sovereign in this capacity, as it is considered a violation of administrative policy for an one to reverse another admin’s punishments.

Like in most nation-states, enforcement of laws is not handled solely by the executive branch. Theoretically speaking, any punishment given by an administrator can be appealed to a judicial body called the Arbitration Committee. Temporary blocks given by solitary administrators are rarely appealed, as they rarely last longer than it takes to convene the council, much less hold a hearing and formulate a decision. However, when a user is given the maximum penalty by a single administrator (one month) and disagrees with the decision, the Arbitration Committee will occasionally hear the user’s case. Like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Committee often upholds the legal doctrine of stare decisis: both the Committee and administrators are expected to treat all previous Committee decisions as precedents which are to be applied in future cases and disputes.

An example of a conflict in Wikipedia that was resolved by the Arbitration Committee was that of Rootology, a user who repeatedly deleted pages and harassed other users and various administrators. The main target of Rootology’s harassment was MONGO, who repeatedly attempted to delete Rootology’s most extreme instances of harassment. This was technically a violation of policy, as users are not allowed to edit the comments of others. MONGO decided to take the dispute to the Arbitration Committee, which agreed to hear the case.

Taking into account testimony by the plaintiff, the defendant, and several witnesses, the Committee decided on sixteen factual matters related to the conduct of Rootology and MONGO. In their opinion, the Committee created or reaffirmed eleven principles, the most important of which were “it is unacceptable to harass another user” and “[a]ny user, including an administrator using administrative powers, may remove or otherwise defeat attempts at harassment of a user.” No action was taken against MONGO, and Rootology was banned indefinitely as a result of the Committee’s decision.

[1] Rosenzweig, Roy (2006). “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past”. The Journal of American History 93: 117–146.

[2] Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1964)

I should note that this work has many flaws, and is currently being revised. Please send me an e-mail if you wish to cite it, as it is of a draft-like quality. I have realized that it is built on a fundamental misconception that juridical power structures (that is, ways of conceptualizing the role of law) are universal. I am in the process of writing a more dialectical “social history” of Wikipedia that recognizes the interdependency of hard and soft norms, social roles and relationships, as well as formal and informal social networks in Wikipedia.

Download Democracy in Wikipedia (PDF, 1.38mb)