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Where next for Wikipedia

Once upon a time there was an idea, and the idea was new and untested, but they went ahead and decided to 'be bold' by doing it anyway.

Within a few years the idea was demonstrably a very good idea indeed and welcomed around the world by lots of different sorts of people.

And the people contributed to the idea with their time and knowledge and, then, with their money if they didn't have the time because they saw that it was good and deserved to get bigger and better.

But the people who had started this weren't sure that it was sensible to keep doing it themselves, for they were sorely in need of a break, so they decided to pay someone to do the 'behind the scenes' work for them.

And it worked. Except that the idea had got SO much bigger that they realised they needed more people. And yet more people, and soon the cost of continuing to make the idea available was costing very much more that the people thought it would.

And the idea became 'professionalised'. And some thought that it was good. And some worried that it wasn't really the idea they'd supported it at the start and wondered why they were still giving of their time to do stuff.

And the Chapters — which were comprised of volunteers all over the world — became increasingly disassociated from the "central office" and wondered what would happen next.

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In the BBC television political comedy Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby — a Permanent Secretary (very senior civil servant) — points out to his Minister Jim Hacker that 'the enemy' aren't the opposition party, but the Civil Service itself. Whereas ministers may believe that they set the policy and direction of their ministry the civil service will tend to try and do things their way, no matter what.

I believe that that 'idea' of ten years ago — Wikipedia — has led to a bureaucracy every bit as separated from the early contributors, many of whom still believe in the original concept, as is a civil service. And that 'civil service' will, by its very existence, tend to pull away from the volunteers' beliefs as it seeks to maintain its own position, whether intentionally or not. It can't really help itself. Wikipedia — for many years as it expanded into other projects and became Wikimedia — relied on committees to process ideas and set its direction. Now, those same committees still exist, but have been reduced to feeding ideas to a central office where decisions will be taken, rather than making that decision and getting the office to carry it out.

There are many quotations about committees. "A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour" (Elbert Hubbard) has a strong element of truth to it, but ignores the point that a body of people can, and will be, more aware of the ramifications of taking that step. Where a staff might decide, for example, that to mention an outside organisation in a fundraising banner will not be a problem, a wider decision-taking group will be aware that thos who contribute time or money might see it very differently, indeed might take the view that Wikipedia has started accepting advertising.

Sir Barnett Cocks suggested that "A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled" and I'd argue that this is a very good thing: any organisation should seek to strangle ideas where a majority (or even a minority) of people believe it is the wrong thing to do, whereas an individual might have taken that dangerous decision without a second thought.

Sir Humphrey (in an unattributed quote of Fred Allen) says to his Minister "A Committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done." I'd suggest changing that slightly to 'but as a group decide that nothing should be done'.

The growing pains of Wikipedia and Wikimedia won't affect a lot of people directly, but the people they will affect have been responsible for making it what is has become. Changing that process and restricting that responsibility has the possibility to slowly strangle what has been achieved so far and, eventually, stunt any further growth.

An update on the UK blocking of Wikipedia

Albums and Abuse

Child abuse is, clearly, something that nobody considers acceptable and would want to prevent. Whether it is recent court cases like 'Baby P' in Haringey or the kidnap of Shannon Matthews by her mother we all rightly find such behaviour abhorrent. But are their limits to what should be considered 'child abuse'?

The Internet Watch Foundation is a non-statutory organisation — though funded by the UK government with additional funds coming from the EU — to block "potentially illegal child sexual abuse content". Whilst it doesn't have a legal mandate to do so (though the IWF says they assess sites according to the Protection of Children Act 1978) twice each day they publish a list of URLs (websites) which they say contain "illegal child sexual abuse content" — 'child porn' by any other name. This list is not made public anywhere and if your website is on it you won't be told about it, but the list is used by many of the UK internet service providers (ISPs); the people who provide your connection to the world's internet. Even if you think you have a 'direct' connection to the web your ISP can — secretly and without your knowledge or permission — block your access to websites.

In some ways this may be a good thing. Libraries often block access to salacious pages from their public terminals (although it often has the side-effect of blocking access to support services too) but at home or work you rather expect that as an adult you are treated accordingly and not stopped from accessing whatever you wish to see.

There is a US band called Scorpions and back in 1976 they released an album. An old-fashioned black record in a sleeve. Called 'Virgin Killer'. I am told it sold fairly well, especially in Japan. The cover was, for its time, quite risqué depicting a naked young girl as if behind a cracked glass screen, where the crack covered those parts which would not be on display in polite company. Her breasts, or what there is of them, are quite visible. The cover had overtones of 'Houses of the Holy' by Led Zeppelin, or the self-titled album by Blind Faith with its own young naked girl on the cover.

Now although I would consider an album cover to be art work (whether I liked the particular music therein or not) it appears that not everyone thinks alike as a number of ISPs — on the say-so of the IWF — have blocked access to the English Wikipedia page for ' Virgin Killer', apparently because of the image of the album cover therein. I use Virgin Media cable broadband and cannot access the page, so I can't really comment.

The IWF don't tell site owners when they are blocked, so it is partially guesswork, however a Demon Internet user has noted that in trying to access the page about the record they received the message "We have blocked this page because, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), it contains indecent images of children or pointers to them; you could be breaking UK law if you viewed the page."

Yet where is the problem here? This is not a 'child porn' image, it is an album cover. If you go to buy the record from Amazon.com they will happily sell it to you and show you the original album cover too (three different copies, in fact).

Some might wonder why this matters and, of course, as an album cover of over thirty years ago — before the Protection of Children Act 1978 even came into force — it doesn't. However it does matter when it happens without our knowledge. How are we users to know what other websites are being silently blocked by the government and police? Our ISPs, to whom we pay substantial amounts of money each month for access to the internet, aren't telling us they are blocking our usage. We are regularly told to beware of being redirected to 'phishing' websites trying to get our details yet we now find that the very ISPs are doing exactly this!

There is then the freedom of speech element. The IWF state "potentially illegal". These are not images nor pages which are confirmed as being unacceptable in law, just that someone has complained about them. And as they haven't been tested in a court we again return to the question of where is it to end. Our museums and art galleries are full of images by old masters and new painters and sculptors examining the human form, and quite rightly so. We are not elderly Victorians even covering up table legs!

I'd never heard of Scorpions before this story broke earlier today when Wikipedia administrators were receiving increasing numbers of complaints from users unable to access Wikipedia at all because of the massive collateral damage this one-page block is causing — it is blocking edit access from everyone on these ISPs who is not logged in. I've no desire to listen to or buy this album (or, indeed, look at the cover again). But this is an abuse of my rights as an adult human, and as the purchaser of a service.

I am a customer of my ISP and, as a customer, I pay for the connection between my computer via the internet to those websites and services running on other computers which I choose. It is not for my ISP to restrict my service to a limited selection of sites and services that they approve of (and without telling me) any more than it is for my phone company to tell me which other phone users I may or may not call.

I do not support child porn, but nor do I support unreasonable hidden restrictions posing as 'safety' when they are anything but.

07-Dec-2008 00:10 · 4 Comments · Trackback ·
tags: Wikimedia · censorship · state v society

Alison Wheeler

(caveat lector)

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Tagged Posts

Where next for Wikipedia

An update on the UK blocking of Wikipedia

Albums and Abuse