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The formalities ofWikipedia administration are described, with links to the appropriate Wikipedia pages. This information can be helpful to Wikipedia contributors in understanding how Wikipedia is organized.
No attempt is made to evaluate whether Wikipedia is in fact governed in the way it claims to be governed, nor is any attempt made to evaluate the adequacy of this structure to meet the ever-changing demands upon an online encyclopedia. This discussion is based entirely upon the English language Wikipedia; its applicability to other language Wikipedias has not been examined.
For a discussion on the various user access levels, seeWikipedia:User access levels.
The contributors oreditors of Wikipedia participate subject to a number ofpolicies and guidelines governing behavior and content. These rules are supervised by various authorities, which are discussed below.
Editors, or Wikipedians, are any regular contributor to Wikipedia, whether as a registered user or by using atemporary account.
Administrators are users entrusted to perform several administrative tasks on the project, such as:
Bureaucrats, known as'crats for short, are some of the most trusted users on the project, with thebureaucrat user group being the most advanced permission able to be granted locally.[b]
Bureaucrats may grant and remove the administrator,[c] bot,[d] and interface administrator[e] flags from an account, as well as grant the bureaucrat flag.[f] Current Wikipedia policy requires bureaucrats to also be administrators, although this is not a technical requirement and is not present on some other wikis.
Members of theArbitration Committee (referred to asArbCom), orArbs, act in concert or in sub-groups to impose binding solutions to conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve, mainly by defining what constitutes a violation in such disputes and imposing sanctions, such asbans andblocks upon users.
ArbCom has very wide latitude in adjudication, as indicated by the following freedoms: ArbCom is free to widen or to divert a case to any subject of their choosing.[1] They are empowered to rule preemptively based upon conjectures about the future.[2][3] Rulings need not follow guidelines and policies; deliberations arenot based upon the "rule of law".[4][5] They are free to adopt opinion,[6] and are not required to assess "who said what in the past".[3]
Though disputes commonly arise overcontent, with the exception oftopic bans the Arbitration Committee explicitly excludes all content issues from their deliberations and focuses upon disciplinary actions.[7]
Althoughedit warring in principle refers to article editing, in practice it is considered disruptive to argue too much on the Talk page as well, and extended discussion may be viewed astendentious editing, orrefusal to get the point, or interfering with consensus,[9] all forms of misconduct and therefore subject to discipline.
Aside from enforcing an end to disputes, the Arbitration Committee can expunge material from any form of usual access, or give specific users the ability to remove some types of edits from the revision history, for example, material considered defamatory.[10] These powers also can be exercised by Stewards of Wikimedia.[11]
The Arbitration Committee can request Bureaucrats to exercise de-Adminship under the circumstances described underAdministrators.
Arbitrators areelected annually in one-year or overlapping two-year terms, and also can be appointed directly by Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation. Theelection rules are debated each year. Although nomination is subject only to ratherbroad criteria, in practice only Administrators have succeeded in being selected as Arbitrators.[12]
Wikipedia is one of a dozen projects of Wikimedia,[13] an organization owned and operated by theWikimedia Foundation.[14] Among the functionaries of Wikimedia are the Stewards[15] of the Wikimedia wikis who have complete access to the wiki interface on all Wikimedia wikis, including the ability to change any and all user rights and groups, view user information in cases of abuse, and so on; and the SysOps of the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki,[16] who manage and maintain the Wikimedia Foundation servers. The tools used by the Stewards in exercising control over the wikis of Wikimedia are described in a handbook.[17] They are guided by theStewards policy, and areelected.[18] Some indication of the control given to Stewards and System Administrators can be found on the Wikimedia web pages.[19]
The overall control is by the ten-memberWikimedia Board of Trustees of whom Jimmy Wales is Chairman Emeritus and a member. The present membership is foundhere and some historical datahere.
all actions and general conduct, not merely the direct issue, may be taken into account
Arbitrators focus on the risk and benefits for the future, not on past issues.
...the committee is more likely to consider if a user can change, or what restrictions would be of benefit to the project, than on who said what in the past
Arbitration is not a court caseRecently changed to read:Arbitration is not a legal process
The rules are principles, not laws, on Wikipedia. Policies and guidelines exist only as rough approximations...
A person's general manner, past actions or incidents, and the impressions of them by reasonable people, may all be used to guide the Arbitrators.
This article incorporates material from theCitizendium article "Wikipedia#Organization", which is licensed under theCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License but not under theGFDL.