FamilySearch Wiki:How Community Governs Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editorial_oversight_and_control Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control] discusses:<br>

*User oversight, a well-written summary of why many editors produce content that increasingly approaches truth. Includes great quotes from Linus Torvalds, IBM, and John Stuart Mill.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_Weekend Wikipedia:Editing Weekend]

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The Wikipedia community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role he/she may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialised tasks, such as reviewing articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism, watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present, around a 75–80% approval rating after enquiry is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust, and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Wikipedia.  

A variety of software-assisted systems and automated programs help several hundred editors to watch for problematic edits and editors. An arbitration committee sits at the top of all editorial and editor conduct disputes,[5] and its members are elected in three regularly-rotated tranches by an established enquiry and decision-making process in which all regular editors can equally participate.  

*Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach, or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Wikipedia's comprehensive dispute resolution process.  

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single-purpose accounts.&nbsp;  

The Wikipedia community is largely self-organizing, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized tasks, such as reviewing articles at others request, watching current edits for vandalism, or watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75-80% approval rating after a communal "no holds barred" inquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Wikipedia.  

*The degree of oversight possible with tens of thousands of bona fide editors

*Widely respected and enforced policies which provide all editors with a solid basis to take matters into their own hands in addressing both deliberate and innocent bad edits.  

*Escalation processes whereby poor conduct or articles being problematically edited will tend to come to the attention of a wider range of editors with authority or willingness to act on them, making vandalism very short term and ultimately somewhat futile.  

*Systems built into its editing software that make it easy for a large number of editors to watch for vandalism, monitor recent changes, and check for activity on selected Watchlist articles, in real time.  

*Ability to set fine-grained software blocks on problematic editors, and partially or fully protect targeted articles.  

=== There is no inner circle&nbsp;of editors<ref name="WiSt" />  ===

....Another aspect is that because of the wide-open nature of the editorial process, there is no bottleneck of control through which the content can readily be controlled or massaged by any given individual or interest group. As well, all edits and actions, including past historical versions, are visible to all editors. The Wiki model itself mitigates extremely strongly against control of articles being manipulated by any one interest group, as there are no obvious applicable points of weakness or "approved circle", through which editorial decisions must pass. As a result, maintaining vandalism or a specific viewpoint is all but impossible in the long term, and Wikipedia is extremely resilient long-term against bias, censorship, or manipulation of its articles.  

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*Editors who disagree are unable to write alternative articles or versions to express their differing viewpoints. Ultimately there is only one page upon which all must edit.<ref name="WiSt">from "The wiki structure" in Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editorial_oversight_and_control</ref>

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