Reform of Wikipedia is an essay seeking different ideas and suggestions in order to improve Wikipedia in its stated goal to create an on-line high-quality encyclopedia, written from a neutral point of view, written in a collegial manner, and written in accord with the policies of Wikipedia.

Reliable information is required to assert than anything is "true".^[2] Knowledge founded upon verifiable truth is an admirable goal for any article.

Wikipedia readers seek quality, accurate and trustworthy articles. A more accurate Wikipedia is therefore a more useful Wikipedia. This essay seeks proposals for the development of policies and guidelines for the reform of Wikipedia. This is a long-term project so please do not expect instant results. The ultimate goal of this essay is to improve the editing environment, both technologically and socially.

Suggestions[edit]

Civility standards[edit]

The goal is to make Wikipedia less confrontational, with higher standards of civility. Civility is a policy and one of the Five pillars of Wikipedia. We should have a proper anti-bullying policy, but we don't.

Why? Because one of the main issues is that both the WP:Civility and WP:Harassment policies lack "teeth" to allow for blocks, interaction bans and site bans in the most extreme cases without gaining broad community consensus over weeks, all while the offending editor(s) can continue to disparage and attack editors. However, the wait for consensus allows for both meat-puppets and sock-puppets to defend the accused while also shifting the community's focus to unfairly criticize and "boomerang-block" the filing party. The current policy states Even a single act of severe incivility could result in a block....

It is proposed that administrators warn editors to not "follow" other editors that they are in conflict with. It is proposed to also allow for administrators to impose a temporary interaction ban for an editor who is following another editor.

Name-calling, 'written' assault and blame-shifting in a heated content dispute is highly disruptive and editors should be properly warned and sanctioned. However, even when there is evidence of disruption and blatant incivility, editors should focus on improving the page rather than name-calling and "editor-bashing". Accusing a primary contributor of an article of "ownership" who has done hard work in following core policies is uncivil. Editor(s) may "WP:STONEWALL" discussion even when there is an obvious problem with the article. For example, some pages attract a highly opinionated group of "advocates" who want the article to reflect their point of view. If any editor tries to restore neutrality, the advocates bully him/her until they get their way.

Uncivil behaviour during a content dispute – such as alleging editors of "POV-pushing" & "WP:IDHT" behaviour, as well as basic insults – is uncivil behaviour. Alleging "ownership" of a mainspace page via the talk page or a revert is also disruptive. Claiming such behaviour is "not uncivil", "just a joke" is uncivil and rude. It is proposed that an editor may be blocked for a period of one month after a warning by an editor or an administrator if they continue to be uncivil. If the uncivil behavior continues after being blocked then they could be blocked for a period of two months and so on.

The word "consensus" is widely used on Wikipedia, but all too often, disputes are settled by shouting and bullying; the winner is the person or group who shouts loudest.^[3] Wikipedia has an essay on WP:Bullying but this is not a policy. The essay states WikiBullying is using Wikipedia to threaten and/or intimidate other people... which means threatening to take an editor to a noticeboard could be interpreted as bullying. Some female editors have also stopped editing Wikipedia because they do not wish to enter into abusive fights with men.^[4]

It is proposed that both the original, and supporting, editor(s) could be blocked starting with 24-hr blocks, and increasing the time amount if the editor refuses to discuss issues civilly. In cases that are taken to WP:ANI, it is proposed that blocks start from a minimum of 1 week for the original uncivil editor, and 36 hrs for editors that participated in uncivil commentary during the discussion - regardless of an editor's "side" in the dispute.

It is proposed a new noticeboard titled Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Civility be created specifically for handling civility issues. This may help alleviate the problems editors face when having to confront aggressive editors. But first there must be super administrators and an independently run new non-profit organization for this specific noticeboard to work. See #Admins and super admins dealing with content disputes. There can also be specialty administrators for this and other noticeboards.

Bias and Wikipedia:Neutral POV[edit]

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view is not enforced consistently. This must change into an area that is consistently enforced with the help of super administrators and experienced editors at the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard. See #Admins and super admins dealing with content disputes.

This does not mean that fringe views should be given equal weight, or that an editor's opinion of what constitutes a neutral POV should ever take precedence over reliable, independent sources. See Wikipedia:Why MEDRS?. Editors with a vested interest in using Wikipedia to promote their external agenda must be topic banned from directly editing the topic of contention.

Fairness of punishment[edit]

Wikipedia rules are not enforced consistently. Some editors are continually being banned while others commit the same offences and are neither banned nor warned for their behavior. This suggests either bias on the part of some administrators, or a systematic bias towards certain editors. There are portions of the community who believe that highly productive content creators should be given much wider latitude than "civil" POV pushers, but most administrators prefer to take action even without reviewing article content. To ensure higher quality article content it is proposed administrators first review article content to check who is actually improving the page rather than warn an editor for reverting. Wikipedia seeks consensus rather than verifiability, in certain circumstances. Wikipedia has no leader or manager to consistently enforce the most basic policies such as Verifiability.

It is proposed a new noticeboard titled Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/FAILEDVERIFICATION be created specifically for handling failed verification content. Volunteers and administrators can collaborate on enforcing verifiability content. For example, if an editor clearly violates Wikipedia:Verifiability policy twice in a 24 hour period on the same article they can be blocked for at least 24 hours or temporarily topic banned for at least a week.

It is proposed:

Recall elections; democracy and consensus[edit]

A policy is needed for "sacking" bad administrators that, while not doing anything specifically disruptive, have lost community trust and/or the respect of the community because of their use of "the tools" or simply their interactions with editors.

A Recall election may solve, or at least alleviate, the problem since there are already Admins open to recall, but there needs to be a better way to deal with the administrators that decide to abuse their tools or have become a source of contention amongst the editing community. Needless to say, there would still need to be limits as to when this could occur due to editors, possibly even other administrators, attempting to desysop "good admins" that have made difficult choices or deal in problem areas such as WP:SPI, and/or contentious editing topics such as the Israel-Palestine area (WP:ARBPIA) or the Balkans.

One proposed solution is that every 5 years administrators can be re-elected. This could be in one of two ways;

1. Admins are temporarily desysopped at the 5-year mark, an election held on whether to re-instate the administrator and, depending on the result, the "mop" can be reinstated or withheld. In the case of a "no consensus", Bureaucrats would decide – based on the discussion and !Votes – whether the administrator will be re-instated or "retired" for a set period before the administrator can re-apply.
2. A "vote" can be put out on whether to "keep" or "retire" an administrator through the use of banner notifications, random mailing to user talkpages, etc. "No consensus" would be decided and interpreted by the Bureaucrats, just as in Option 1.

Administration; WMF and donors[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has, by its design and charter, no accountability for content on Wikipedia. It cannot be made accountable for content due to the legal liabilities this would entail. Aside from the requirements of WP:OFFICE, content has generally been in the purview of the community. As such, content has been under the purview of the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) – in extreme cases; Formal Meditation Committee (MedCom) – in pure content disputes; and editorial consensus for the remaining majority of article content. However, this allows for many editors to insert original research into articles without interference. Consensus is working for many editors who are against the rules being enforced.

Rare WP:OFFICE actions aside, the WMF does not directly influence what is written on Wikipedia.^[5] In the future if the WMF will be more open to expert authority steps can be taken for expert review. This would, however, expose them to cost and liability. It would also risk discouraging some editors of the project from continuing to edit because some editors are against expert-oriented encyclopedias such Citizendium. Wikipedia began as a feeder project for the expert-driven Nupedia encyclopedia. The original intent of Wikipedia was for experts to review Wikipedia article content. In other words, the ethos of Wikipedia was originally for expert review. Government regulators such as Ofcom could help with content disputes, but they currently do not have any jurisdiction.

It is proposed that the major donors to the WMF, including the Knight Foundation, are contacted to explain to them the serious problems with Wikipedia. The donors could get together and issue a statement to the board members about their concerns with Wikipedia if they agree there are concerns with the project. If the board members ignore the concerns the donors could publicly discuss the concerns and seek remedies to resolve the issues.

It is proposed that at least five WMF board members are active members of the Wikipedia community. Board members have been criticized because of their connection with Silicon Valley.^[6]

Admins and super admins dealing with content disputes[edit]

WMF cannot hire people to edit Wikipedia to police article content and resolve disputes. This could, however, potentially be done with a separate and new non-profit organization to avoid losing Section 230 immunity, but this in turn would involve the new body in the same question of liability. The board members who want articles to improve will agree. If any board member does not agree then they may understand there is a serious problem with Wikipedia such as counterproductive edits by biased editors or it may not matter to them. Experts and neutral editors will be paid to edit Wikipedia via the new non-profit organization. They can eventually be funded by donations independent of the WMF. There can be elected members to the new non-profit organization via the Wikipedia community. They can overrule consensus, administrators, ANI, and ArbCom such as topic bans when there is a consensus via the new non-profit organization. There can be paid administrators to improve article content. The new administrators would not be regular administrators. They would be super administrators specifically trained to police article content and block bias administrators. These 'super-admins' can prevent others from changing their 'approved content' by reverting without initially needing to block an editor who tries to change specific text. They can focus on medical and health-related topics. For other topics there may or may not be enough experts to improve article content. Experts can be elected by the Wikipedia community. Experts with a background in writing peer-reviewed articles are suitable candidates. Wikipedia can have a formal structure with which to determine a subject-matter expert, and grant users privileges based on expertise. On controversial topics such as chiropractic and homeopathy people such as chiropractors and homeopaths do not make good experts. When there is no leader governing article content this encourages ant-collaborate behavior and anarchist thinking without any sense of accountability. Without gentle expert authority and review Wikipedia is committed to amateurism.^[8] If the WMF continues to refuse to allow expert authority to oversee content decisions then they do not believe in creating high quality content.

It is proposed that after an administrator or super administrator warn an editor regarding original research material that the editor has added to an article, that the editor may be blocked for a period of one week if they restore the same OR material, and continued restoration of the material should result in increasing block-lengths. If another editor supports the material being added into the article and claims it is sourced, then the issue can be taken to the No Original Research Noticeboard (WP:NORN), the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard (WP:DRN), or a Request for Comment (WP:RFC) could be created – for community discussion and to resolve the dispute. An antidisruptive system requires identification of the antidisruptive action.

WP:Consensus is currently the only way of altering existing procedures, policies and guidelines, as well as many of the disputes and miscellaneous issues that arise on Wikipedia. Consensus gives no guarantees of a beneficial resolution to an issue, or that any resolution at all, will surface.

In mainspace this does not work well: the fact that consensus and vote-counting is used, means that attempts to flood a debate with arguments not grounded in policy, has succeeded. Editors state vote-counting should not be used, but it is often the case. For example, a debate is closed by consensus based on the number of votes rather than reviewing the strengthen of the arguments. There may be a small clique of editors with a vested interest, and in this case consensus can result in a non-compliant article. Consensus also breaks down when there are substantial camps with entrenched views, and this can often lead to arbitration. Administrators claim consensus is what matters and ignore whether the change was inaccurate or was original research and refuse to review the change because they claim it is explicitly not the job the community elected them to do. Volunteers are not here to help administrators to enforce the rules. Administrators increase damage done by disruptive editors to article content when they refuse to enforce policies that would improve article content. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable, yet the rules are not being actively enforced. Editors have replaced sourced text with WP:original research, yet administrators refuse to police article content and help fix the ongoing problems. Editors delete sourced text claiming the statement was not supported by the citation, yet administrators will agree with consensus rather than read the citation to determine whether the citation verified the claim. Administrators do not usually enforce WP:BLP violations even when it is brought to their attention. Administrators could be trained to enforce WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR policies rather than continue to ignore the rules. WP:Consensus should not override WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:OR policies; on many occasions bad-faith or incompetent editors ignore those policies. The Wikipedia community has no leader, but that could change when there is a new non-profit organization enforcing the rules. They can vote who is the leader or co-leaders. Wikipedia:Administrators and WP:ArbCom, and also other WP:WP processes such as WP:DR must actively enforce the rules, including WP:NPOV and WP:V policies.

ArbCom does not, but should be used to, enforce policies regarding article content. This would help ensure editors do not "game" the system of WP:Consensus and continue to make counterproductive edits.

Deletion of articles[edit]

There are attempts to remove "suitable" information or topics for bad reasons, including wikilawyering ones, and including phenomena such as 'oversimplification'. "Deletionism", so defined, is believed by "inclusionists" to be "a vampire sucking the life out of Wikipedia".

"Deletionism" is said to be the main cause of many other problems, including the editor retention problem, and "inclusionists" seek reform of our deletion criteria and processes. We might, for example, make WP:GNG less subjective, so that it could not be taken as an excuse to make arguments of the "no matter how much coverage there is, I won't accept that it is 'significant'" variety. If the article is detailed and well sourced it does not have to be deleted. Votes according to "consensus" can delete articles on subject matter editors do not like. There is occasional confusion between subject-specific inclusion guidelines.

There are also attempts to include unsuitable information or topics for bad reasons, including wikilawyering ones, and including phenomena such as 'it is in a source!'. "Inclusionism", so defined, is believed by "deletionists" to be larding Wikipedia with poorly sourced content that often violates WP:SOAPBOX or WP:COI.

"Inclusionism" is said to be the main cause of many other problems, including the increasing difficulty for a fixed or declining editor base to maintain the reliability and integrity of increasing millions of articles. "Deletionists" seek reform of our deletion criteria and processes to make it more difficult for conflicted editors and advocates to abuse Wikipedia. We might, for example, make the WP:GNG less subjective, so that it could not be taken as an excuse to make arguments of the "no matter how little coverage there is in high quality sources, I won't accept that it is 'insignificant'" variety.

Sockpuppetry[edit]

New accounts that aren't actually new users (i.e. sockpuppets) are a plague on the project, with sometimes dozens of socks for a single banned editor. One sign of sock puppetry is a new account is targeting an editor they think is making the most improvements to an article or topic while paying little attention to others who are editing the same article or topic. Administrators refuse to block a new sock account unless there is "solid evidence" of sockpuppetry. It is proposed administrators will run CheckUser requests for Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations when there is only little evidence, especially for specific topics with a history of sockpuppetry. Sock accounts have been used to edit war and to try to ban editors. As long as an editor must provide "solid evidence" of sockpuppetry there will be sock accounts that will remain unblocked and unchecked. It is proposed CheckUser can be used for "fishing expeditions" for articles with a history of sockpuppetry.

Anarchy[edit]

Policies contain the text, "This page documents an English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow." The reality is that administrators are not empowered to support our policies and guidelines. Policies at many levels are in disrepute, including WP:Banning policy, WP:Deletion policy, WP:Civility, WP:Editing policy, and WP:Verifiability. Only policies that represent the external force of law have teeth, those being WP:BLP and WP:Copyright policy. WP:BLP violations are not consistently enforced. But WP:plagiarism, which is a serious offense throughout academia, carries no opprobrium at Wikipedia. In other words, the rules that are possibly enforced are the rules that are required to be enforced by law. But the WMF refuses to enforce copyright violations as long as the copyright holder does not complain.

Citation placement[edit]

The WP:INTEGRITY of the content relies heavily on the citation placement. Rather than place all the citations at the end of the sentence it is encouraged to place each citation where it verifies each specific idea or concept to avoid confusion. If a sentence has more than one claim verified to different sources then try to place each citation after each claim rather than place all the citations at the end of the sentence in accordance with WP:CITEFOOT. Readers might think the text is original research if there is no citation or if there is a commented out citation at the end of the sentence. Hiding citations with the markup <!-- --> may cause confusion because readers may mistakenly think it is unreferenced. Hiding the citation by commenting it out at the end of the sentence does not help the reader verify the claim. Most of the time one citation at the end of each sentence is enough to verify the statement. Adding additional citations at the end of a sentence when only one is needed may decrease readability. However, for controversial claims adding up to three citations at the end of a sentence may decrease the likelihood the statement will be challenged. It improves the verifiability of the content when there is a correctly placed visible citation for each statement. Any material without an inline citation at the end of a sentence is considered unsourced.

Favorite quotes[edit]

• Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. — Confucius
• I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about. — Arthur C. Clarke
• Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything. — W. Clement Stone
• Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family. — Kofi Annan
• I thought that the project would never have the amount of credibility it could have if it were not somehow more open and welcoming to experts. — Larry Sanger

Union of Editors[edit]

Forming a Union of Editors on Wikipedia may challenge the power of the many alleged secret cabals. There is one documented case of a secret cabal in 2007, but no reports since then.^[9]

The proposed Union of Editors will not be a cabal because it will be quite open about what it is doing and who belongs to it. If you are interested in joining and agree with the opinions of this essay, please add the userbox {{User:UserBox/Reformist}} to your userpage.

WikiProject for Reform[edit]

It is proposed that the experts can start a new Wikiproject on Wikipedia titled Wikipedia:WikiProject Reform. They can discuss, collaborate, or debate anything related to creating high-quality articles on Wikipedia. Without the experts the new project will not succeed with sensible and practical reforms, because the Wikipedia community has not upheld the core values of the institute of Wikipedia.

See also[edit]

• Everipedia
• Gender bias on Wikipedia
• Wikipedia#Systemic bias
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias/Gender gap task force
• Wikipedia:BMJ/Expert review
• Wiki Project Med Foundation
• Wikipedia:Reform
• Wikipedia:Reforms
• Wikipedia:Community health initiative
• Wikipedia:Community health initiative on English Wikipedia
• meta:Grants:IdeaLab/Getting Academic Reviewers

Possibly relevant sources[edit]

• http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/
• https://posthegemony.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/meltdown-at-wikipedia/
• http://wikistrategies.net/james-heilman-removed/
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016 Strategy/Community consultation

References[edit]

Userbox[edit]

Code	Result
{{User:QuackGuru/Reformist}}	This user believes Wikipedia needs reforms.	Usage