Wikipedia as editorial microcosom

Wikipedia needs people to contribute. It needs a culture that solves its other problems while still encouraging people to help out. After a period of initial enthusiasm around its inception and growing popularity, regular contributors and devoted Wikipedians diminished, leaving questions about the sustainability of the project (refer to Simonite, 2013). Meanwhile, Problem #1 led to elaborate editorial conventions and culture that created barriers to entry for new editors. These combined issues led to increased efforts within Wikipedia to support its community and welcome new editors.

Understanding this community is essential for understanding how Wikipedia functions. The Wikipedia community is built on a few basic principles. One of the most important is that there are no firm rules. This is one of Wikipedia's five pillars and is designed to give the community license to adjust its rules and expectations both over time and to particular kinds of articles and issues that arise: "The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording, and sometimes improving Wikipedia requires making exceptions. . . . And do not agonize over making mistakes: (almost) every past version of a page is saved, so mistakes can be easily corrected."

The idea of consensus is also at the core of community procedures. Consensus on Wikipedia is not agreement or the result of a vote; rather, to some extent consensus might be thought of as whatever emerges in the editing process, as long as this process remains respectful, issues are raised and discussed, and sufficient attention is paid to open questions. For most pages, there is not enough attention or concern to create problems in consensus. In the event of escalating concerns or controversy, there are then equally escalating procedures for intervention throughout the community. This means that most edits and questions will be resolved relatively easily, with a majority of attention and community effort focused on the concerns arising from important or controversial topics or where particularly troublesome editing or editors arise.^[7]

To maintain both its integrity and its community, Wikipedia has to discourage disruptive editing while welcoming new editors. The attempt to ensure the integrity of Wikipedia led to so many rules and adamant responses to new editing that an essential behavioral guideline emerged, known as "Don't bite the newcomer" (often referred to as WP:Bite). This is often invoked when editors respond harshly or with suspicion to editors who are still learning how to edit or are casually contributing.

These attempts to welcome new editors points to the potential disorientation one can experience when entering a writing space that one naively assumes is open and accessible simply because one can make edits. Anyone may make edits, but at the same time, Wikipedia's editorial community expects all contributors to conform themselves to the standards that have been adopted by the community to ensure quality. New Wikipedia editors may add text to any article without awareness of typical editing procedures. If what they share does not fit within Wikipedia editing conventions, they may receive a message informing them of this feedback from reviewers. For many new editors, it is a surprise that there is even a reviewing process. In this process, reviewers may cite policies to justify their edits, policies which the newcomer is also likely unaware of. Only with more editing and involvement is one likely to discover and appreciate that the policies themselves are collaboratively written by the same volunteer editorial community.

In the process of entering the community, one comes to see that the process behind the scenes in Wikipedia has at least as many distinct roles for users as any conventional publishing house. Writing conventions, limits, and interactions inevitably emerge, with their own history and reasons, that one has to orient oneself to. In addition, standards of quality emerge from and by those who step forward to participate, especially those willing to examine the contributions of others to provide feedback and otherwise assist them in their writing.

^[7] For an extensive discussion of these issues, refer to McDowell and Vetter (2021) and Kennedy (2016).