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Concerns
editIndustrial Sabotage of Wikipedia?
editIndustrial Sabotage is a well documented phenomenon. Industrial sabotage involves the intentional disruption of the business activity of an enterprise. The motives for industrial sabotage vary, but include labor management conflict, extortion, political conflict and commercial competition. It is the last two motives that concern me here. To make it perfectly clear, I do not accuse any individuals or organizations of committing sabotage against Wikipedia. However, it would be naive to assume that industrial sabotage could not occur against Wikipedia, that no organization would have the motive, or that no-one would stoop that low.
Without making any accusations, I would point out that a commercial enterprise, if its revenue were sufficiently threatened, might have an economic interest in disrupting the development of Wikipedia. Disruption motivated by commercial competition might take the forms of constant "churn" of the content of Wikipedia, in an attempt to prevent stable, high quality versions from emerging. It might also take the form of encouraging personalized conflicts with editors, for the purpose of diverting energies, driving editors away etc.
Again, without making any accusations, I would point out that governments, both in their historic practice, and in their proclaimed intentions, have conducted "information" wars. Wikipedia is in a significant position to influence the views of large sections of the world population. A key enhancing factor for that influence is the image of Wikipedia as an open forum, where mis-information may be easily corrected by anyone. This image promotes the perception that the information in Wikipedia is verifiable and ideologically neutral, or must rapidly become so. How could such attributes not be true if anyone is free to make corrections? A government, wishing to suppress critical information, or to add "spin", would thus have an interest in creating an atmosphere within Wikipedia in which frustrates editors, thereby reducing that actual corrective actions upon the content of Wikipedia without sacrificing the appearance of an Encylopedia that anyone can edit.
Neither industrial sabotage from commercial sources, nor from governmental or political sources, need express a consistant point of view. In fact, the promotion of a consistent point of view would likely be a hindrance to such sabotage. Rather, the personalization of conflicts, and arbitrariness and inconsistency in the application of policies would be more useful. Such approaches could both be used to prevent the emergence of stable, high quality articles, and to frustrate editors to reduce the breadth of influence of the general population upon the content of Wikipedia.
What to do?
editWhile it be naive to assume that industrial sabotage could not occur against Wikipedia, that no organization would have the motive, or that no-one would stoop that low, it would be a foolish mistake to jump to conclusions, to assert that any individuals or organizations are engaging in such sabotage without proof. We must assume that editors are acting in good faith, even if we believe those actions to be counter-productive. What is needed is to strengthen the habits of all editors of working toward conflict resolution through dialog. Patient discussion should be used to explain the danger to Wikipedia posed by frequent resort to administrative actions, reliance on super-majority, intimidation etc.
One area that I believe ought to be treated with particular sanctity is the use of NPOV and Disputed templates. When bone-fide disputes exist, either with regards to facts or to neutrality, then NPOV and Disputed tags can warn the public not to assume that an existing text is undisputed. I believe it ought to be a right for any user to place NPOV or Disputed templates on articles, where bone-fide disputes exist. This right ought to be protected, and the placement of such tags on articles with such bone-fide disputes ought not to be used in any adminstrative actions against the editors adding such tags.