Organisations holding a high amount of power have a natural tendency to become more and more bureaucratic over time. I’m borrowing the concept from Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules. The signs of a bureaucracy are the one-way addition of rules over time (rules are only added, very rarely deleted). While maintaining a facade of impartiality, these rules allow the insiders the flexibility to settle whatever way as the moment’s incentives require. They act in a way that displaces accountability from the insiders on to the outsiders.
Wikipedia does hold some amount of power, and it looks well on its way towards bureaucratization. The number of editors has been going down, and it’s notoriously become more discouraging for newcomers.
I don’t think Wikipedia’s rules are leaning left. I think Wikipedia’s rules are on their way to becoming dense and overlapping enough as to allow insiders to settle whatever way they need to.
Bureaucratic organisations rarely reform. Hopefully they crumble under their own dead weight and are replaced by better ones.
Organisations holding a high amount of power have a natural tendency to become more and more bureaucratic over time. I’m borrowing the concept from Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules. The signs of a bureaucracy are the one-way addition of rules over time (rules are only added, very rarely deleted). While maintaining a facade of impartiality, these rules allow the insiders the flexibility to settle whatever way as the moment’s incentives require. They act in a way that displaces accountability from the insiders on to the outsiders.
Wikipedia does hold some amount of power, and it looks well on its way towards bureaucratization. The number of editors has been going down, and it’s notoriously become more discouraging for newcomers.
I don’t think Wikipedia’s rules are leaning left. I think Wikipedia’s rules are on their way to becoming dense and overlapping enough as to allow insiders to settle whatever way they need to.
Bureaucratic organisations rarely reform. Hopefully they crumble under their own dead weight and are replaced by better ones.