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Administrator abuse on Wikipedia is an alleged pattern of behavior on Wikipedia whereby administrators (sometimes called sysops), individually or as a group, enforce their own will in upon the general editor community in disregard Wikipedia's internal policies and processes that have been determined by collaboration and consensus.^{[citation needed]}

In this conext, the term "administrator" is also often used (or misused) for editors who are not formally administrators, but engage in adminstrative activities like tagging and categorizing articles, running robots, writing and enforcing rules, proposing user bans and article deletions, etc.; or who are mistaken by other editors as administrators on the basis of their actions or arguments.

Contents [hide] 1 Background 1.1 Wikipedia editors 1.2 Administrators 1.3 Administrator privileges 1.4 Administrators authority in disciplinary enforcement 2 Complaints about administrator abuse 2.1 Administrator influence on policy making 2.2 Perception of administrators as a closed community 3 Consistency of complaints 4 Attempted and proposed solutions 5 Notes 6 References

[edit] Background

[edit] Wikipedia editors

Since its founding in 2001 by Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has been expanded and edited collaboratively through the use of a "wiki" model that allows articles to be edited by registered and unregistered users.^[1] Since 2006, in the wake of the Wikipedia biography controversy, article creation has been restricted to registered users, and other restrictions were enacted with the purpose of protect Wikipedia against malicious edits.^[2] However, editing and user registration remained open to anyone, and Wikipedia ostensibly retained the basic principle of equal status for all good faith editors. As of 2010, Jimbo Wales still claimed in his statement of principles for Wikipedia,

There must be no cabal, no elite, and no hierarchy or structure to get in the way of this openness to newcomers. Any security measures to be implemented to protect the community against real vandals (and there are real vandals, who do occasionally affect us), should be implemented on the model of "strict scrutiny."

[edit] Administrators

To prevent vandalism and to control user conduct, the Wikipedia community relies on volunteer administrators which are invested with the means and authority to discipline users.^[2] To become an administrator on Wikipedia, an editor is subjected to a formal process, called a request for adminship, in which the entire Wikipedia community of editors has an opportunity to evaluate and discuss the candidate's qualifications and arrive at a consensus on whether to promote the candidate to the position of administrator. ^[3]. Administrator status was not intended to create a subgroup of editors set apart from the existing editor community, rather, administrators and non-administrators were intended to remain on equal footing.^[4]

[edit] Administrator privileges

Although nominally on equal footing with other editors, administrators can necessarily perform editing actions that "ordinary" (non-administrator) editors cannot do nor undo. These include deleting articles (including their history and past versions), protecting specific pages against edits by ordinary users, and blocking specific users or IP numbers from editing. To prevent these powers from being abused, strict policies and procedures were imposed on administrators. For instance, since the early years of Wikipedia, the deletion of an article had to follow a protocol that included the posting of a deletion notice on the article itself, and a debate on an special discussion forum—the Articles for Deletion (AfD) page—where any editors who disagreed with the deletion could argue against it. Moreover, since every sysop can undo the actions of other sysops, any reported abuse by one individual can in principle be corrected by his peers. Nevertheless, those extra powers inevitably meant that the opinion of administrators, individually and as a whole, would prevail over that of ordinary users in certain kinds of disputes.

While the principle of equality among editors was never formally revised, changes in Wikipedia policies have gradually increased the effective authority of administrators. For instance, at some point sysops were given the authority to speedily delete without discussion articles that were clearly malicious, or deemed inappropriate by any of several other criteria. In 2010, these criteria were further widened to include biographies of living persons which did not include adequate references, irrespective of their contents being verifiable or not. As a consequence of these enlarged powers, administrators have increasingly had to impose their opinion, ex officio, over that of ordinary users.^[5]

[edit] Administrators authority in disciplinary enforcement

The highest body in Wikipedia for resolving diputes between editors is the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). However ArbCom has no power to enforce its decisions, but depends on administrators to enforce them. An example of this reliance is seen in the case of William Connolley, a proponent of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming, although not an administrator at the time. As a consequence of an editing dispute between Connolley and another editor, ArbCom imposed sanctions on both parties. Yet "many members of the community [of administrators] disagreed that these restrictions should have been placed on Connolley; as a result, the ArbCom decision was not enforced."^[5] ArbCom reversed its decision just prior to the time when the sanctions were due to expire.^[5]

[edit] Complaints about administrator abuse

Complaints about alleged administrator abuse are frequently made in Wikipedia's internal discussion pages, including the pages asoociated with specific articles as well as general forums and pages for dicussing specific rules and other administrative bodies. Only a small fraction of those allegations have been formally submitted to Wikipedia's disciplinary committes.

Numerous allegations have also been made in those internal forums that administrator abuse has been steadily increasing in frequency and severity, and that it is one major reason for the obvious decline in editor numbers since 2006. These allegations have been echoed outside Wikipedia, in some technical forums and in mainstream media.^{[citation needed]} "Some disillusioned former Wikipedians gripe about such bureaucratic heavy-handedness and/or the rabidity of some of the site’s devotees, grumbling about 'Swastikipedia.'"^[1] It has also been noted that, despite the perception of Wikipedia as a "shining example of Web democracy" that "a small number of people are running the show."^[6] Despite the need for some form of control in an open system, this "doesn't explain the kind of territorialism—the authorial domination by 1 percent of contributors—on the site's pages."^[6]

[edit] Administrator influence on policy making

In spite of the appearance of carefully structured enforcement mechanisms, the manner in which policies are enforced in practice tends to depend on the "personal discretion" of administrators. As a consequence administrators are perceived as having substantial influence on the formation of Wikipedia policies.^[who?] As described by one administrator, "it's not the policy that dictates the actions of admins, it's the actions of admins that create the policy; you can't force us to do anything."^[7] As a result, it is argued that administrators may not follow the steps described in policy when engaging in administrative actions. For example, Ayelet Oz raised the case of administrators blocking accounts that were used for vandalism without first warning the account holders. This gap between policy and practice reflects a similar situation found in other formal legal jurisdictions, but raises concerns about possible tensions engendered by the system.^[7]

[edit] Perception of administrators as a closed community

In 2007 it was revealed that some administrators were communicating with each other using a secret, administrator only, mailing list. According to The Register, a United Kingdom based on-line science and technology magazine, Wikipedia "administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power."^[8] In this case, an admin banned an editor that was extremely productive and claimed that the reasons could not be publicly discussed because of the sensitive nature of the information. Then, according to The Register, another editor published a list e-mail from the admin, admitting that the banned editor was productive, but believing that the editor was on a mission to destroy Wikipedia from within. Within 75 minutes of imposing the block, it was lifted, and the admin subsequently relinquished her sysop position.^[8] According to Kelly Martin, a former ArbCom member, the list is "certainly not consistent with the public principles of the site. But in reality, it's standard practice."^[8]

[edit] Consistency of complaints

The existence and significance of widespread administrator abuse is highy disputed within Wikipedia. A common rebuttal to such allegations is that a raising of editorial standards became necessary to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. In particular, the higher rates of article deletions observed since 2006^{[citation needed]} are claimed to be necessary to meet new guidelines on allowed article topics, such as a set of "notability" requirements. The same argument is used to justify the insertion of tags in articles that warn readers against perceived flaws and/or request that other editors perform certain editorial actions.

There have been no systematic surveys of editor opinions about sysop behavior, or Wikipedia governance in general. A limited enquiry was made in 2009 among former Wikipedia editors, with the goal of finding out the reasons why they had left.^{[citation needed]} Another experiment was conducted in 2009, with the goal of determining whether Wikipedia had indeed become hostile to new editors. In this experiment, several exprienced editors pretended to be inexperienced new users, deliberately created poor-quality articles, and followed their fate over the following weeks.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Attempted and proposed solutions

Wikipedia at one point attempted to make the disciplinary process more transparent by creating a Community Sanctions Noticeboard in February 2007. Ayelet Oz argued that the attempt was a failure because it "provoked outrage because the discussion on the noticeboard made sanctioning practices transparent", and by so doing forced the community as a whole to engage in the process of sanctioning users: a process that highlighted the distinction between Wikipedia's core values and the need for and practice of enforcement. By moving these processes to the background and by keeping the tasks of policing and building the encyclopedia separate, she argued that the focus remained on the development of Wikipedia. The Community Sanctions Noticeboard was shut down in October, 2007.^[7]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References