4 ms·

> Wikipedia is a corporation nitpick: WMF (the org that develops and hosts Wikipedia and its related services like Wikimedia Commons) is a non-profit foundatio

> Wikipedia is a corporation nitpick: WMF (the org that develops and hosts Wikipedia and its related services like Wikimedia Commons) is a non-profit foundation, not the classic type of profit-driven corporation that your post implies.

xmprt 9mo ago
I don't think corporation implies for-profit. In my eyes, corporation refers to a large organization with some self-serving motivation which is not necessarily just money. Being a non-profit just so happens to be the best vehicle for this motivation but it doesn't mean that the motivation doesn't exist.
- GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago
  at least in america, in common discussion outside of legal/highly wonky circles, referring to an organization as a corporation almost always implies a for-profit corporation, with (literally) vanishingly few examples of the contrary in popular knowledge (RIP CPB, may you return someday).
  - xmprt 9mo ago
    Would you consider OpenAI a corporation despite it being a non-profit?
    - GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago
      the for-profit pbc arm, yes, absolutely.
seawsurf 9mo ago
Well, I prefer to be skeptical of any corporation, regardless if it is non-profit or not, until proven otherwise with substantial transparency on their methods of moderation and control. There is a lack of transparency on Wikipedia. The rules are nebulous and prone to abuse by veteran users and the oligarchs aggregating on political articles.
- OvidNaso 9mo ago
  Hold on, their moderation methods are as transparent as could possibly be. Every article has a dedicated page where every decision has a reason and more often than not an overwhelming amount of discussion. Their overall policy is similarly debated publicly. Is it overwhelming? Oh yes. Tough to change? Probably also yes without dedication and sound reasoning. But opaque? Certainly doesn't fail that criteria.
  - seawsurf 9mo ago
    It certainly becomes opaque when it is a labyrinth of links and documents that you need to read and follow through. It does not help when these same rules can be abused to death by veteran users. At a certain point, no one really knows the devil's dance happening at the top of the moderation ladder and you end up wasting a lot of lifetime on these dead talk pages. It is a bureaucratic nightmare.
    - saghm 9mo ago
      I don't really see how it's possible to be transparent about decisions for something this large without it being somewhat complex to follow the paper trail. If enough stuff from a discussion is written down, it's going to be complex. If the discussions aren't recorded in a publicly accessible way, that's clearly even less transparent. And if the scope of the discussions for something as large as Wikipedia haven't scaled with proportion to the amount of content being discussed, most of the decisions would probably not have been discussed at all, either due to individuals making them on their own (which is not particularly transparent, since there's no visibility into how they reached those decisions), or it was automated in some way (which is at most only as transparent as it would be to have the human who implemented the automation directly in charge of making the decisions, but in practice often is the least transparent option of all because most of the time automated moderation is almost always relying on ML or something similar).
ryan_lane 9mo ago
I think this deserves more than a nitpick. WMF also doesn't dictate the actions of the volunteer community, and neither does the board. The content of Wikipedia is fully volunteer created and maintained, and admin actions are also handled by the volunteer community. The foundation is there to provide technical, legal, and community support. In some cases this is funding for community events, in other cases, this includes funding towards making the editor community more diverse. In most cases, though, it's keeping a staff of folks that maintain and improve the software, and defend the project legally. So, no Wikipedia isn't a corporation. It's more of a commune.
- seawsurf 9mo ago
  I think I should have used the word 'entity', but commune is better since the body of editors are so diverse. But they sure have oligarchies.
  - ryan_lane 9mo ago
    I think it would be hard to say it's an oligarchy. There's 450 or so active admins (and around 900 total), and really, they don't truly have that much power. The vast majority of decisions on Wikipedia are made by editors, and on occasion admins get involved. This isn't a country with some ruling class. 450 people aren't in cahoots to stop you from editing.
  - mrguyorama 9mo ago
    >But they sure have oligarchies. Then name one of the relevant oligarchs

xmprt 9mo ago

I don't think corporation implies for-profit. In my eyes, corporation refers to a large organization with some self-serving motivation which is not necessarily just money. Being a non-profit just so happens to be the best vehicle for this motivation but it doesn't mean that the motivation doesn't exist.

GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago
at least in america, in common discussion outside of legal/highly wonky circles, referring to an organization as a corporation almost always implies a for-profit corporation, with (literally) vanishingly few examples of the contrary in popular knowledge (RIP CPB, may you return someday).
- xmprt 9mo ago
  Would you consider OpenAI a corporation despite it being a non-profit?
  - GuinansEyebrows 9mo ago
    the for-profit pbc arm, yes, absolutely.

seawsurf 9mo ago

Well, I prefer to be skeptical of any corporation, regardless if it is non-profit or not, until proven otherwise with substantial transparency on their methods of moderation and control. There is a lack of transparency on Wikipedia. The rules are nebulous and prone to abuse by veteran users and the oligarchs aggregating on political articles.

OvidNaso 9mo ago
Hold on, their moderation methods are as transparent as could possibly be. Every article has a dedicated page where every decision has a reason and more often than not an overwhelming amount of discussion. Their overall policy is similarly debated publicly. Is it overwhelming? Oh yes. Tough to change? Probably also yes without dedication and sound reasoning. But opaque? Certainly doesn't fail that criteria.
- seawsurf 9mo ago
  It certainly becomes opaque when it is a labyrinth of links and documents that you need to read and follow through. It does not help when these same rules can be abused to death by veteran users. At a certain point, no one really knows the devil's dance happening at the top of the moderation ladder and you end up wasting a lot of lifetime on these dead talk pages. It is a bureaucratic nightmare.
  - saghm 9mo ago
    I don't really see how it's possible to be transparent about decisions for something this large without it being somewhat complex to follow the paper trail. If enough stuff from a discussion is written down, it's going to be complex. If the discussions aren't recorded in a publicly accessible way, that's clearly even less transparent. And if the scope of the discussions for something as large as Wikipedia haven't scaled with proportion to the amount of content being discussed, most of the decisions would probably not have been discussed at all, either due to individuals making them on their own (which is not particularly transparent, since there's no visibility into how they reached those decisions), or it was automated in some way (which is at most only as transparent as it would be to have the human who implemented the automation directly in charge of making the decisions, but in practice often is the least transparent option of all because most of the time automated moderation is almost always relying on ML or something similar).

ryan_lane 9mo ago

I think this deserves more than a nitpick. WMF also doesn't dictate the actions of the volunteer community, and neither does the board. The content of Wikipedia is fully volunteer created and maintained, and admin actions are also handled by the volunteer community. The foundation is there to provide technical, legal, and community support. In some cases this is funding for community events, in other cases, this includes funding towards making the editor community more diverse. In most cases, though, it's keeping a staff of folks that maintain and improve the software, and defend the project legally. So, no Wikipedia isn't a corporation. It's more of a commune.

seawsurf 9mo ago
I think I should have used the word 'entity', but commune is better since the body of editors are so diverse. But they sure have oligarchies.
- ryan_lane 9mo ago
  I think it would be hard to say it's an oligarchy. There's 450 or so active admins (and around 900 total), and really, they don't truly have that much power. The vast majority of decisions on Wikipedia are made by editors, and on occasion admins get involved. This isn't a country with some ruling class. 450 people aren't in cahoots to stop you from editing.
- mrguyorama 9mo ago
  >But they sure have oligarchies. Then name one of the relevant oligarchs