User:CorbinSimpson/TINC

This page is an essay. It contains rhetoric, and is not supposed to represent anything other than my view of the truth. It is not intended to be inflammatory or polemical, just honest and up-front. I have made every effort possible to ensure that no names are given.

There Is No Cabal. TINC. The phrase is one of the Internet's oldest memes, dating back to Usenet's beginnings as a distributed service. It was always suspected that the administrators of the machines providing the main Usenet repositories had agendas. Certain newsgroups were outrageously popular, while others were suggested but never added. Of course, this being the Internet, groups started to hypothesize that there was in fact a conspiracy of administrators. These people believed that the "cabal," or administrative layer of users, quietly pruned and shaped discussions, deleting threads that did not agree with them and promoting threads which improved their standing and reputation. Of course, this being the Internet, people disagreed. Lots of people disagreed. The phrase "shut the fuck up" might have been useful back then, but because Diablo, StarCraft, and Half-Life had not yet entered the world, the mood was different. People were alternately more sensitive and less caring. Nobody really believed that there was a cabal, other than a small handful of prophets, and so people often replied to conspiracy theories with four short words: There Is No Cabal. TINC.

Now, let's move forward to today. Today, we have Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Which Anyone Can Edit. Yay. Wikipedia is FLOSS, or "free as in beer, free as in speech;" whichever one fits your worldview best. Nearly anybody can edit nearly any article, and theoretically everybody has a say in all decision-making. Theoretically.

Wikipedia is socialist. Not Socialist, and certainly not Communist, but undeniably socialist. All of its content originates from the community. To deny this social aspect is to deny the entire philosophy of Wiki in its myriad forms. Our voices, no matter how small, quiet, and hopelessly opinionated they may be, nonetheless come together to form a single sound. Remember Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha? The river's gentle roar comes from many quiet drops of water. In the same way, we can think of Wikipedia as being the Aum of the Internet.

Of course, there are those who prefer chaos to enlightenment. There are people who chant off-key (poor editors), people who use other's chants in place of their own (copyright infringers), people who do not understand why we chant (unsourced writers), people who exploit the New Age appeal of Aum for their own benefit (advertisers and spammers), people who sing too loudly (opinionated writers), and, of course, people who refuse to chant at all (readers who refuse to contribute.) Of course, the "worst" people are those who scream as loudly as they can, attempting to destroy Aum. They make no effort to chant. Their only aim is ruin and chaos, which is why they are so dangerous. They have a name. They are the vandals.

In theory, anybody can be rehabilitated. Even the most evil creatures can appreciate and understand Aum if they try. In practice, however, it's much different. There are, in essence, two paths. The Light Path is the path to Aum. It requires the individual to participate in the chant, and to be constructive. People on this path will eventually become perfect editors, fully in harmony with all around them. The Dark Path is the path of ruin. Those on this path become trolls and flamers, discordant harpies destroying all in their path. Anyone who follows this path will eventually become a vandal.

This dichotomy is of the utmost importance. For better or worse, every contributor to Wikipedia will at one time or another find themselves on one of these paths. The Dark Path is easy to complete, while the Light Path has not been completed by any editor at the time of writing.

It could be said that administrative duties fall into two categories here on Wikipedia. The first is bureaucratic. Administrators carry out the will of the community. They oversee discussions of decisions. They are expected to execute requested and consensual deletions, to protect and unprotect pages as agreed by prior discussion, and to carry out the mandates of the social leadership of the Arbitration Committee. They also clerk for arbitration, checkuser, and request for comment pages.

The second set of adminstrative duties is not so clear-cut. Administrators are the extraordinary guardians of the holy and sacred Aum; they alone are explicitly tasked with defending Wikipedia from vandalism.

So, what's the problem here? Well, there's actually quite a few problems. I will only outline them here — I honestly don't know what the solutions are. In no particular order, here are the problems we face:

• Administrator accountability. (Or, Yes Virginia, There Is A Cabal. (YV,TIAC.)) Do we seriously believe that all administrators are neutral, unbiased, accurate? That they are perfect editors, clerks, bureaucrats, moderators? Clearly, that's what we've accepted as policy, seeing as how administrators are given near-perfect freedom to do whatever they would like. Why isn't there a system for administrative review?
• Vandal (mis)classification. Vandalism is a serious charge. Too often, it is used to defame ordinary editors who are only trying to improve the encyclopedia. I have personally observed the following types of edits mislabeled as vandalism, and seen similarly improper warnings issued to the editors, for the following:
  • Poor grammar
  • Unsourced statements
  • Non-neutral points of view
  • Lack of wikification
  • Incorrect wiki markup
  • Off-topic subjects
  • Unverifiable statements
  • Ignorance of the fair use policy for uploaded images
  • Ignorance of the copyright and permissions policy for written text and lists
• Disrespect for the good faith policy. You may all read it at Wikipedia:Assume good faith. In fact, I would hope that you all have the policy memorized, and value it as one of the most important, if not the most important, policies for dealing with other users. Sadly, there are many editors who simply assume that one bad edit, from one new user, is a step down the Dark Path, rather than a step towards harmonious light.
• Overuse of the "WP:BOLD policy." In fact, the "policy" at WP:BOLD is a guideline, and it only refers to boldness in updating articles and writing new articles. It does not permit being bold in any of the following situations:
  • Blocking users
  • Unblocking users
  • Protecting pages
  • Unprotecting pages
  • Editing user pages
  • Editing templates transcluded into hundreds of articles
  • Editing policy pages
  • Flaming or trolling on talk pages
  • Nominating articles for deletion using the WP:AFD system (note that Proposed deletion is, by nature, a unilateral move)
  • Editing the main page (yes, even on April Fool's Day this is still seen as a wildly reckless move)
• Rejection of minority opinions as unworthy of inclusion despite status as subjective truth. Plain English? People will delete parts of articles that they don't believe demonstrate the truth. Why? Because they simply don't like the idea that "their" Wikipedia espouses any opinion besides theirs. Of course, the truth is actually an opinion in and of itself, and in order to be a good article, all opinions, criticisms, views, truths, and untruths, if they are held by a notable number of people, should be included in the article. WP:GA and WP:FA criteria were written with this in mind: A Good Article should be "broad," and a Featured Article should be "comprehensive." Not narrow-minded, not closed, not dual-party, not one or the other, not one single truth, not God's word. Broad and comprehensive. One of the biggest complaints about Wikipedia is the amount of censoring that goes on here. It's time to be open again.

As a closer, I would like to note that administrator accountability does not imply that all administrators are bad, reckless, or evil. There are only a small handful of admins that seem completely and totally unable to follow the rules. Sadly, they ruin the day for the majority of our brave, valiant sysops, who do their best and are respected for it. - Corbin ^{Be excellent} 20:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)