User:Wer900/There is a cabal

Wikipedia is broken and failing. The way in which Wikipedia makes decisions - by means of "consensus" - has not helped those who have a genuine interest in building, enhancing, and maintaining this encyclopedia.

Groups of Wikipedia users

Currently Wikipedia is populated by the following classes of users:

• content creators, curators, and content-dispute resolvers
• counter-vandalism patrollers
• vandals, flamers, trolls, and the like
• POV warriors
• the select group who do none of the above but merely write policies and guidelines

I value each group roughly in proportion with the order in which I have listed them. Without the first group, Wikipedia would lack any content to begin with, and if this group were to precipitously drop in number the content that was already there would slowly become out-of-date and slowly rot. Although I do greatly appreciate the services of the second group - counter-vandalism editors - it would be better if they would be able to write and curate content. Unfortunately, the existence of the third group, of vandals and the like, makes this impossible. While it would be better if the second group did not have to exist, they are invaluable to our encyclopedia and keep out the ignorant hordes.

Vandals and their ilk merely find it hilarious to add dirty words to articles or create patent-nonsense pages from redlinks like this one (with the exception of the occasional actual hoaxer), damage which is easily repaired and can often be done using bots or speedy deletion. It is the POV warriors who pose the major threat to the encyclopedia, seriously damaging the credibility of our articles by maliciously inserting false or misleading passages into articles, and then digging in their heels on the talk page in order to try to fight for their ideology in cyberspace. Nearly all POV warriors, though, do feel some internal motivation and activism, and thus have a genuine drive to put their material, despite the fact that it contravenes basic policies. This does not entirely justify their actions, though, and I by no means condone this group.

The last major group on Wikipedia is that which is there for the pleasure of having tens of thousands of servants follow their will. This is the only group that has the energy and motivation to sustain itself for weeks in policy disputes. This is the group that only types messages like "Delete per WP:N," without contributing to the encyclopedia any quality content or protecting against vandals. This is the group that can sleep safely having tagged an article while never having done any copyediting, content improvement, or rewriting work at all. This is the group that has forever disregarded the true meaning of the consensus policy it publicly upholds so zealously and is the most frequent to bring up WP:NOTDEM and WP:NOTBURO as a blank check to stop any attempt to stop the growth and perpetuation of its unjustly gotten power. This group claims that Wikipedia is a collaborative anarchy and rattles on that point to death, while itself being the self-selected shadow elite that writes all Wikipedia policies and guidelines. This is the Cabal, and it's not from a Wikipedia humor page. It is real.

What can the community do?

What can be done about this? Several things:

• Create a popularly elected Wikipedia Assembly composed of a democratically elected, term-limited, broad section of the community in order to create regulations, policies and guidelines permitted by previous policies and guidelines and its Constitution, as well as to produce reports on Wikipedia and coordinate WikiProjects and other community efforts.
• Create a governance apparatus under the control of the elected Assembly in order to implement its regulations, produce reports, and coordinate community efforts.
• Place all admins under this governance apparatus, and establish independent review boards (made of randomly chosen active admins and non-admins) in order to decide whether or not admins should be hired or kept.
• Establish the office of Coordinating Administrator in order to, well, coordinate administrative work.
• Reduce the number of administrators to about 500, a more manageable level than the current 1400.
• Repeal the anti-canvassing policy, created by the Cabal in order to prevent any changes to the present order.
• Clearly define consensus.

Arguments by the Cabal

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." _{George Lucas - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)}

• Wikipedia is not a democracy, and hence we should not have an elected Wikipedia Assembly.

This argument is actually complete bullshit. Just because Wikipedia is not a democracy, does not mean we have to directly avoid any semblance of what may look like a democracy. Besides, at some level, democracy and voting are the way to ensure that a representative sample of Wikipedians, who invest the long hours into reading academic journal articles or patrol new pages and hence ensure quality content, are enfranchised, as opposed to a self-selected cabal deciding the rules for the rest who actually do the work.

• Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, so we should therefore not create new governance structures.

The principle of "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy" primarily deals with the lack of hard statute on Wikipedia in favor of policies that are more open to interpretation, and also makes a statement statement that Wikipedia does not exist for the purpose of process and structure, but in order to provide a body of freely accessible knowledge (both libre and gratis) that lacks bias. On two fronts the members of this self-selected cabal violate the key tenets of this policy; not only to they continue to be active on Wikipedia primarily for the policies, guidelines, processes and disputes, but also do little to produce or maintain free and unbiased knowledge as per Wikipedia's goal.

• Wikipedia is a collective anarchy, for which reason it is to completely lack centralized governance.

The rank and file of content-creators and maintainers strongly disagrees. The largest and most successful WikiProjects, although they are rather decentralized, maintain internal structures of coordination in order to ensure the timely completion of tasks and the dissemination of information to project members. The proposal I have written provides for this coordination by allowing an elected assembly to control the administration of policies and (in rare cases) the creation of new ones (for a short period of time). This is yet another place where the views of the Cabal and the practices of actual editors directly contravene each other, to the detriment of the encyclopedia.

Besides, the possibility of a stateless society is nonexistent and should be relegated to the historical dustbin where Karl Marx currently resides. A stateless society would create a power vacuum, which would be quickly filled by groups acting in their own interest rather than the broader interest of the people. Such a situation has arisen on Wikipedia, where power has been taken by the Cabal. Political authority will always exist - it would be in the interest of the community to vest it in a body chosen by and from the people, not a self-selected elite. There is a contradiction, again, between the statements and actions of the Cabal - the Cabal claims that in the furtherance of collective anarchy, there should be no centralized governance structures on Wikipedia, while itself being the centralized governance structure of Wikipedia, and one that does not represent the community.

• Handing over authority to an elected assembly would move power away from the community and into the hands of a few.

The endless debates and disputes on Wikipedia are not the reason for the community's existence; we are here to build an encyclopedia. Somehow, this is still a hard concept for the Cabal to grasp. Most users on Wikipedia, while they do wish to have the final say on important matters concerning the encyclopedia, and would like an open and accepting governance model, are here to contribute neutral content, not descend into intractable yelling matches with the few brave souls from the world of content contribution who dare venture into the fortress of the Cabal. A representative assembly would enable users chosen by all from a broad selection of the community to handle coordination and regulation of the administrator force, while still maintaining broad the decentralization and autonomy that enables users to freely contribute and communicate with minimal restriction.

An elected assembly, however far-away from the average Wikipedian a Cabal member may make it out to be, is preferable to a self-selected organization whose only reason for remaining on the encyclopedia is the pure joy of heated and angry debate. If we were to let the current order continue, permit the Cabal to remain in place, the movement of power away from the community would continue apace while we were constantly bombarded with the mantra which conceals it.

• Decisions on Wikipedia are made by consensus, not by election.

The consensus is that of the Cabal, in which novel views are shot down almost immediately. There is no vigorous and lively debate with the participation of many members of the community, only an atmosphere in which Caballists nearly always win due to the fact that most opponents to their rule are actually constructing content rather than engaging them in proverbial blood sport. Thus there is no consensus; it is no different from war, where through sheer aggression and force a side gets its way. This is not consensus, discussing ideas to reach a mutually agreeable solution. The Cabal yet again proves itself to be a fount of lies and contradiction.

• Repealing anti-canvassing policies will create an unfair form of consensus by means of non-neutral messages on important community matters.

Oh my God. Yet again the Cabal is feeding us lies that they think that we cannot see through. What the Cabal calls "canvassing" is actually the appropriate prerequisite to the debate that leads to consensus. Although messages to the editing community are permitted, they are required to be completely neutral and devoid of analysis. This is meant to thwart any attempt to raise awareness in the editing community as to how new proposed policies will affect them, and forbids any discussion whether or not to support or oppose different policies outside of the main discussion page itself, which is dominated by the Cabal. This is merely another way that the Cabal wishes to ensure that only those people here for the debate, angry yelling and policymaking, rather than for the creation and protection of content, continue to make the rules.

Results of taking action

If action is taken in the fashion proposed, good will happen. The Mafia/Cabal/Sith/[insert preferred name here] will be stripped of its power, not gained through any duly approved law or constitution, and the era of self-selection of political elites on our encyclopedia will be over. Coordination of the entire encyclopedia will be conducted by an unambiguously founded Assembly and subsidiary government structure, with the Arbitration Committee serving as a judicial branch with its existing jurisdiction. Wikipedia will be following a more successful model, rather than one that dooms it to failure. The flow of experienced contributors away from the encyclopedia will be dramatically slowed down, and the project as a whole will have improved coordination, more dynamism, and a clearer sense of direction.

Failure to take action will doom us to the rule-by-decree of the Cabal which has only served to drive away older editors and deter new ones from joining. It will mean the continuation of an opaque model of governance put to best use in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia, with frequently rigged elections and silencing of the opposition behind a front of freedom and collaboration. Wikipedia and its community deserve better than the huge affront to its dignity that is called the Cabal. Change is necessary, and now!