Dispute Resolution: Community

Dispute resolution
Over time, Wikipedia has developed a semi-formal dispute resolution process to assist in such
circumstances. To determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate
community forums,[note 5] or seek outside input through third opinion requests or by initiating a more
general community discussion known as a "request for comment".
Arbitration Committee
Main article: Arbitration Committee
The Arbitration Committee presides over the ultimate dispute resolution process. Although
disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article
should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that
should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of
disputes and rather focuses on the way disputes are conducted, [119] functioning not so much to
resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic
editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. Therefore, the
committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content
changes when it deems the new content violates Wikipedia policies (for example, if the new
content is considered biased). Its remedies include cautions and probations (used in 63% of
cases) and banning editors from articles (43%), subject matters (23%), or Wikipedia (16%).
Complete bans from Wikipedia are generally limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social
behavior. When conduct is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather anti-consensus or in
violation of editing policies, remedies tend to be limited to warnings. [120]
Community
Main article: Wikipedia community
Video of Wikimania 2005—an annual conference for users of Wikipedia and other projects operated by
the Wikimedia Foundation, was held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany August 4–8.
Each article and each user of Wikipedia has an associated "Talk" page. These form the primary
communication channel for editors to discuss, coordinate and debate. [121]
Wikipedians and British Museum curators collaborate on the article Hoxne Hoard in June 2010
Wikipedia's community has been described as cultlike,[122] although not always with entirely
negative connotations.[123] The project's preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires
compromise that includes disregard of credentials, has been referred to as "anti-elitism".[124]
Wikipedians sometimes award one another virtual barnstars for good work. These personalized
tokens of appreciation reveal a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to
include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. [125]
Wikipedia does not require that its editors and contributors provide identification. [126] As Wikipedia
grew, "Who writes Wikipedia?" became one of the questions frequently asked on the project.
[127]
Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred
volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore "much
like any traditional organization". [128] In 2008, a Slate magazine article reported that: "According to
researchers in Palo Alto, one percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the
site's edits."[129] This method of evaluating contributions was later disputed by Aaron Swartz, who
noted that several articles he sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number
of characters) contributed by users with low edit counts.[130]
The English Wikipedia has 6,156,402 articles, 39,877,047 registered editors, and 130,575 active
editors. An editor is considered active if they have made one or more edits in the past 30 days.
Editors who fail to comply with Wikipedia cultural rituals, such as signing talk page comments,
may implicitly signal that they are Wikipedia outsiders, increasing the odds that Wikipedia
insiders may target or discount their contributions. Becoming a Wikipedia insider involves non-
trivial costs: the contributor is expected to learn Wikipedia-specific technological codes, submit to
a sometimes convoluted dispute resolution process, and learn a "baffling culture rich with in-
jokes and insider references".[131] Editors who do not log in are in some sense second-class
citizens on Wikipedia,[131] as "participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who
have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing
participation",[132] but the contribution histories of anonymous unregistered editors recognized only
by their IP addresses cannot be attributed to a particular editor with certainty.
Studies
A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that "anonymous and infrequent
contributors to Wikipedia [...] are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who
register with the site".[133] Jimmy Wales stated in 2009 that "[I]t turns out over 50% of all the edits
are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people ... And in fact, the most active 2%, which is 1400
people, have done 73.4% of all the edits."[128] However, Business Insider editor and
journalist Henry Blodget showed in 2009 that in a random sample of articles, most content in
Wikipedia (measured by the amount of contributed text that survives to the latest sampled edit) is
created by "outsiders", while most editing and formatting is done by "insiders". [128]
A 2008 study found that Wikipedians were less agreeable, open, and conscientious than others,
[134][135]
although a later commentary pointed out serious flaws, including that the data showed
higher openness and that the differences with the control group and the samples were small.
[136]
According to a 2009 study, there is "evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia
community to new content".[137]

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