It's quite hard to take this comment in good faith, because the politics of wikipedia community of power editors is well documented and criticised. But since yo

It's quite hard to take this comment in good faith, because the politics of wikipedia community of power editors is well documented and criticised. But since you've decided that out of all the comments in this thread, that my one somehow demands more robust empirical scrutiny, here's an empirical study for your reference [0]. > I really don't understand either how editing a wikipedia article gives you power over someone It is impossible for me to take this comment at face value. I don't believe that it is not immediately obvious to you how exerting editorial control over the 7th most visited site on the internet, a site that is aiming to represent "the sum of all human knowledge", represents a significant source of power to influence society. It's great that you've enjoyed the process of contributing minor edits, and content to niche fields. But you can't ignore the fact that a majority of the content comes from a tiny minority of the userbase, and that their motives demonstrably resolve around a desire to control information in many cases. [0]: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4228b090-8900-4a29-baa3-660300cdd283/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Grisel_2023_Cancelling_disputes_how.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4228b090-8900-4a29-baa3-66... > Based on empirical data drawn from a series of interviews and an exhaustive analysis of its cases between 2004 and 2020, this paper examines the ways in which the Arbitration Committee handles conduct-related disputes between editors, and the impact of social capital, summarily defined as the “capital captured through social relations” (Lin 2001, 19), on this process. My empirical material indicates that the Arbitration Committee not only examines the merits of the claims made by the disputants, but also and more crucially facilitates a social contest by considering the position of each disputant within the community of editors. Ultimately, the Arbitration Committee seeks to “cancel” these disputes in order to preserve Wikipedia’s social fabric.