Formal Roles and HierarcHy
Formal Roles and HierarcHy
A Cabal That Rules the World
This chapter describes the functioning of the parahierarchy on Wikipedia and the expectations (and their gradual increase) that the community has for its functionaries. It addresses the paradox of why the members of an egalitarian and ahierarchical organization have strong perceptions of inequality in the organization and alienation. Furthermore, it shows that the quantification of editor input (number of edits) contributes to the increasing bureaucratization of Wikipedia and deters high-quality edits. It links these processes to the fact that the Wikipedia community relies on local power-knowledge differentials as substitutes for formal hierarchies.
Keywords: hierarchy online, roles on Wikipedia, authority relations online, Wikipedia power structure
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