Chapter 13
He stared at the screen in disbelief. “You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia”. “You are still able to view pages, but you are now not able to edit, move, or create them. Editing has been blocked (disabled) for the following reason(s): Vandalism” . For the first time in three years of literally stellar contributions to Wikipedia (he was a specialist in astrophysics and astronomy), he had been blocked.
You pass through a range of emotions when you are blocked, none of them pleasant.
The relationship between the ‘Wikipedian’ community of administrators, and the ‘content creators’ who contribute the actual material to the encyclopedia, has always been strained. In 2007 the first shot in the war is fired: an administrator blocks a high-profile and highly regarded content creator called ‘World traveller’, in real life an astrophysicist who has contributed to many of the Wikipedia articles on astronomy.
It was not always like this. There were basic administrator capabilities under the original UseModWiki system introduced in January 2001, but the password was given out freely. Blocking would be rare, said Jimbo, and confined to the type of person who goes around inserting foul language randomly. “If you’ve merely offended someone, that’s no excuse for an IP block. Everyone who they knew should get sysop status ‘unless they are a total jerk’.
With the rapid growth in the project between 2005 and 2007, this changes. The administrative community restricts its growth by a creating series of increasingly difficult obstacles to membership. The struggle between the content creators and administrators has a profound effect on the project, most of all on morale. In the beginning, for many, it really had been about bringing the sum of human knowledge to every person on the planet. But that is eventually overtaken by a different ethos which defines Wikipedia in terms of the defensive purpose of fighting vandals and protecting at all costs the self-image of ‘the community’. This also brings into prominence and authority a different kind of person, skilled only in the low-skilled work of vandal-fighting and patrolling.
Worldtraveller leaves at the beginning of March 2007. His final questions are no less relevant to Wikipedia today. “Why has the system failed to produce a quality reference work? What can be done to change the system? Is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up? Does this matter, given that Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world?”
