By Agahnim and TDA

Unlike other ‘Top Ten’ websites such as Google and Facebook, Wikipedia has no corporate hierarchy to maintain control. The well-funded Wikimedia Foundation exerts no authority over its content, instead leaving the site’s loose-knit community to govern everything. Wikipedia’s editors create and control its content through a continual series of conflicts and wars of attrition, governed by a system of inconsistent and vague policies and rules where one rule may be negated by another rule. Should these factions fail to settle their differences, then Wikipedia’s highest authority, known as the Arbitration Committee, settles disputes based on its evaluation of the parties’ conduct.

The Arbitration Committee, also known as ArbCom, is officially leaderless and its membership is changed in part every year by elections and resignations, leaving its longest-serving members with substantial influence over its operations. Its cases are decided by discussion on the Committee’s secretive mailing list and the Committee is kept functioning as a cohesive unit by a “Coordinating Arbitrator”, who may serve in that position as long as he or she remains on the Committee.

So, who is the longest-serving Arbitrator? Who runs the mailing list? Who is the Coordinating Arbitrator? All three positions are currently held by the same man, possibly the most powerful leader in Wikipedia’s chaotic power structure, who has authored many of the Arbitration Committee’s important decisions.

His name is Roger Davies.

Who is Roger Davies? How did he become so become so influential? More importantly, how has he wielded this influence over Wikipedia’s community? Unfortunately, just as Richard Nixon used his influence as President of the United States to protect supporters and to crush dissent from undesirables, so has Roger Davies used his power to aid his cronies and be

…continue reading Roger Davies: Wikipedia’s Imperial Arbitrator