FNMF

A quotation

We do not and can not know what will be important 100 years from now. True. We will let those Wikipedians of the future decide for themselves. We live here and now, and having total fucking crap (have I ever cursed on Wikipedia before?) in Wikipedia today, on the theory that the people of 100 years hence might want to write an article about it then, strikes me as unwise.--Jimbo Wales

On Wikipedia

From a cybernetic point of view, the success or failure of the Wikipedia project might be conceived as a matter of calculating the following ratio:

(CORRECTIONS + NEW CORRECT FACTS) PER UNIT OF TIME : NEW ERRORS PER UNIT OF TIME

Should this ratio fall below one, then the project could be described as entropic, that is, as losing information at a greater rate than gaining it.

In reality, of course, assessing the character of information is not only a question of whether it is correct or incorrect. Any proper evaluation of the direction of the evolution of Wikipedia must include the question of the relative mediocrity or excellence of the information it contains. If this is the case, then the cybernetic perspective is deficient in failing to recognise that there is an irreducible element of judgment—that is, interpretation—necessary for such an evaluation. This is the true ground of most of the disputes on Wikipedia: beyond disagreements over fact lies differing interpretations of the matter of those facts, and of what facts matter. These are differences grounded in differences of care. It is the inevitable possibility of such differences which makes Wikipedia capable of achieving excellence, but this is also what makes it susceptible to regressive or herdish tendencies.

The relation between editors of an entry is a struggle between the tendency toward competition (in the Greek sense of eris) and the tendency toward community. Each of these—competition and community—is susceptible to regression. When the competitive tendency becomes regressive, it is called war. When the communal tendency becomes regressive, it is called herdishness. The goal of the Wikipedia project must be to encourage editors to strive for competition and community, and to discourage editors from succumbing to their irreducible susceptibility to regression. When these regressive tendencies gain strength around an entry, a "culture" (in a bad sense, as in a bacterial culture) develops consisting of war between herds, and the result is destructive rather than constructive editing. The best must be promoted, and the worst must be demoted, for Wikipedia to project itself forward, or upward.

To defend itself against regressive tendencies, Wikipedia is built upon a hierarchy of powers. And to defend itself against the potential for abuse of these powers, Wikipedia relies on trust: it hopes that those entrusted with power will employ their powers wisely, that is, with a sense of justice and a sense of community. The danger that comes with this hierarchy of powers lies in the fact that, if Wikipedia is a community, it is a virtual one, divorced to a lesser or greater extent from the real world of consequences. Thus the danger is that, divorced from consequences, those entrusted with power may forget or neglect the senses of community and justice which should curb and determine the way in which power is deployed. The risk is thus that those entrusted with power may succumb to the temptations to bully, intimidate, and control. In short, all the regressive tendencies which may afflict Wikipedia editors, are tendencies which may equally afflict administrators and others in the chain of power. Should these tendencies take hold and become hegemonic, the Wikipedia project will cease to be a community and become instead a cult of power—that is, no longer a culture (in a good sense, as in a community of care), lacking the judgment which only a sense of justice can bring, and without which it would be impossible to cultivate the encyclopaedic ends Wikipedia originally projected for itself.

Despite the deficiencies of the cybernetic viewpoint, it is still valid to understand the health and prospects of Wikipedia in terms of the relative strengths of entropic and negentropic tendencies. That is, it is still a question of whether, overall, the entries are improving at a greater rate than they are deteriorating. Although oceans of awfulness remain, and seem to rise higher every day, it is still possible that in the long term the negentropic tendency might be a little stronger than the entropic. This, I believe, is the necessary Wikipedian faith, without which contributors will inevitably sink into despair or retirement.