wikipedia post 2

Wikipedia has over 16 million articles with millions of users constantly increasing and editing the information on the website making it more detailed and accurate everyday. For this massive amount of users there has to be a set protocol for managing people and information to ensure efficient work in a productive direction. This is created by giving users a status, based on the contributions they have made to the website. Then as users rise up the totem pole of statuses (such as administrator) they get more power within the website. They can eventually delete entries, block users and ip addresses.

The users of Wikipedia can be described as a democratic colony of ants. Many of the users are working towards a common cause, to make the website a better source of information. Some of the users are vandalizing the website and are then kicked off. The users are not told what to do, so their actions are randomized but in such volume that the general direction is that of progress. They have their own individual intentions but with the amount of people on the website it works to an advantage.

The reason the site is not overwhelmed with vandalism is because of how easy it is for a user to spot the vandalism and undo it. The administrator can also see what other posts the user has edited, and block the user and his ip address with a few simple clicks. This effort is much less than it takes to create an account and vandalize the site, hence why the vandalism is powerfully moderated

“We love and need new contributors, and that none of this should be construed as in any way criticizing someone just because he or she is new to the project. If we criticize anyone, it should be because they’re writing bad articles, acting trollishly, or otherwise acting in a decidedly noncontributory fashion.” (123). The site needs to maintain certain rules to make sure its core values are held strong. Anyone is allowed to write anything they want with no censorship, and the system accommodates for multiple points of view. The result is a plethora of ideas and opinions of people from all over the world, making the website a stronghold against mainstream media biases and allows the people to learn a neutral illustration of many events and histories.

                When edits are made to an article, it can result in controversy between users. This is discussed and negotiated between users and a compromise is made. It ends with everyone’s input coordinated in a non biased informative way. This constructive criticism is the core process behind the scenes which keeps the articles neutral. Over time each article grows and is edited until it is full of organized detail and linked to many other Wikipedia pages which provide more related information. Wikipedia has grown to a large interconnected plethora of information and is still growing every day.