The Information Society, 27: 40–51, 2011Copyright c© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0197-2243 print / 1087-6537 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01972243.2011.534368

PERSPECTIVE

Wikipedia’s “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflictthrough Ambiguity

Sorin Adam MateiDepartment of Communication, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Caius DobrescuDepartment of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, University of Bucharest,Bucharest, Romania

This article discusses how one of the most important Wikipediapolicies, the “neutral point of view” (NPOV), is appropriated andinterpreted by the participants in the Wikipedia project. By an-alyzing a set of constitutive documents for the Wikipedian uni-verse, including discussion about NPOV, the authors conclude thatambiguity is at the heart of the policy process on Wikipedia. Theoverarching conclusion is that ambiguity on Wikipedia is not extra-neous, but a central ingredient of this wiki project’s policymaking.Ambiguity naturally develops from the pluralist and nonhierar-chic values of the culture that brought Wikipedia to life, and thisconclusion requires that we reconsider the nature of “neutrality”practiced on Wikipedia.

Keywords ambiguity, collaboration, conflict, editor, policy, power,social media, wiki, Wikipedia

The wiki model of “open content” publishing (Feller2005; Leuf and Cunningham 2001), made famous byWikipedia and known in the popular lore as “the ency-clopedia anyone can edit,” enables members of apparentlyuncoordinated groups to collaborate in creating and dis-seminating various types of knowledge and content. Ac-cess to content is free, and technological barriers to entry

Received 1 March 2010; accepted 8 March 2010.This research project was support in part by the CNCSIS project

ID 760 (Cultural discourse and cultural legitimacy in the XXth cen-tury) financed by UEFISCSU (contract number 863/19.01.2009) andcoordinated by Dr. Rodica Ilie.

Address correspondence to Sorin Adam Matei, Purdue University,BRNG 2132, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. E-mail: sorin@matei.org

are low; thus, anyone with minimal computer skills canstart editing wiki articles immediately. Wiki productionsystems raise a number of important questions. Some ofthese issues have increasingly attracted the attention of thescholarly community (Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman 2005;Emigh and Herring 2005; Herring et al. 2004; Lih 2004,2009; Viegas, Wattenberg, and Kushal 2004; Stvilia et al.2005); however, much remains to be explored.

Among the issues that demand more attention is themanner in which nonhierarchical content generation en-vironments deal with plurality of vision or with definingand choosing facts, evaluating them, and assigning themmeaning (Forte and Bruckman 2008). Also important isthe study of the strategies used in collaborative environ-ments to convert conflict into socially useful interactions(Kollock and Smith 1996). Elucidating these issues is par-ticularly important when striving to understand open con-tent production environments that deal with social andhumanistic subjects, such as wiki encyclopedias (Emighand Herring 2005). Lack of centralized management mightcreate in such environments the expectation that all voicesshould be heard and all meanings considered in producinga specific outcome.

This article focuses on the role played by conflict andby one of the strategies employed to minimize it, am-biguity, in Wikipedia. We are particularly interested inunderstanding how conflict and ambiguity influence themanner in which active Wikipedia members understandthe making and implementation of the “neutral point ofview” (NPOV) policy.1

Our study examines claims made in Wikipedia’s edito-rial policies that neutral, factual, value-free knowledge is

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the goal and possibly the end state of the content produc-tion fostered by it. We critically scrutinize this position,especially in view of the fact that if valid, it would contra-dict some powerful cultural and social trends. Particularly,this position would turn Wikipedia into one of the veryfew sites of objective knowledge production in a world in-creasingly dominated by subjectivity and personal appro-priation of collective meanings (Bellah et al. 1996; Taylor1989). It would also reject a major premise of contempo-rary sociology of knowledge that human knowledge is so-cially constructed. As Berger and Luckmann (1980) havesuggested, knowledge production is influenced by indi-vidual, institutional, and social trends, which make claimsof objectivity problematic. In other words, we work to de-termine whether the claims of neutrality and objectivitymade by Wikipedia’s central policy, that of the NPOV, areinterpreted as intended by the active Wikipedia memberswho use it in their daily activities.

Bellah et al. (1996) warn us about a slow drift towardpersonalized interpretations of just about everything, in-cluding concepts, values, and standards. The imperativeto express oneself, including in the process of knowledgeseeking, and to recast the world in an expressive moldhas become a core social value. Interpreted, appropriated,and reformulated to fit personal definitions of truth andvalue, knowledge-seeking has become a self-expressiveexercise rather than a quest for universal commonalities.Yet if self-expression is not to be devalued or, worse,turned into mass isolation through increase in the amountof opinions and controversies (Lanier 2010), a social andintellectual framework should be found to reconcile theexploding number of preferences and ideals. The modernpreference for subjective expression of individual opinioncan be, however, averted or minimized through ambiguity,which can be seen as an axiologic and actional strategy(Bauman 1991). Ambiguity, in this context, is the situationin which more than one meaning is accepted for any givennarrative or concept. Actors can preserve a semblance ofcommon values, concepts, or ethical guidelines because,playing on the old adage, ambiguity allows them to agreeto disagree. While pretending to use the same words orconcepts or to abide by the same rules, actors make themental reservation that the true meaning of everythingthey say or do is ultimately interpretable from their ownperspective.

One of our aims is to see whether this type of strate-gic ambiguity can be identified in the conversation carriedby active Wikipedia members about Wikipedia’s centralpolicy, NPOV. Wikipedia, as we argue later, is caught upin a game of ambiguity because it is a space that, will-ingly or not, fosters personal interpretation of rules andexpression of opinions. As a low-barrier-to-entry medium,it has become a popular avenue for making individual-

ized and expressive knowledge available to the rest ofthe world (Bryant et al. 2005). Associating a pluralityof voices, conflict, and ambiguity with Wikipedia mightappear counterintuitive at first sight. Emigh and Herring(2005) have concluded that Wikipedia’s style and toneare formal and its presentational discourse impersonal,resembling, at least superficially, traditional encyclope-dic content. This seems to be reinforced by a number ofWikipedian core tenets: (1) embracing a culture of collab-oration, (2) speaking with one voice (with an emphasis onconsensus and rules against posting original research; seeWikipedia 2008), and (3) adopting neutrality (and objec-tivity) as main discursive and methodological approaches(Wikipedia 2007). Wikipedia’s declared goal is to createknowledge that emerges from erasing rather than high-lighting individual markers of authorship. Consequently,it ostensibly rejects authorship claims and subjective in-terpretation.

In what follows, we argue that NPOV, one ofWikipedia’s core policies, is affected by subjective in-terpretation and constant conflicts. At the same time, wepropose that conflict is alleviated, if not completely re-duced, by allowing systemic ambiguity. Our main claimis that the Wikipedian project is successful only insofaras it has learned to solve meaning-related conflict throughambiguity.

WIKIPEDIA AND ITS CHALLENGES

Wikipedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia createdoutside traditional authorship, editorial, and copyrightconstraints, is an “open content” repository of encyclope-dic knowledge designed from the ground up as a collectiveand distributed effort (Wikipedia 2007).

Philosophically akin with, although not completelysimilar to, the open-source software movement that wasspearheaded by Stallman (2006) and popularized by Ray-mond’s famous essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”(2001), Wikipedia relies, as its name suggests, on the wikipublishing paradigm (Leuf and Cunningham 2001). Cre-ated by Cunningham in 1995, wikis are Web-based col-lective and nonhierarchical publication systems shapedafter the Portland Pattern Repository.2 Wikis have Web-based editing interfaces, which allow any Internet visitorto add, delete, and publish content. The initial goal of Cun-ningham’s repository was to serve as a historical recordof computer programming ideas. Wikis today are mostlydedicated to facilitating Web-based knowledge produc-tion and management, such as encyclopedic knowledge,news, or textbooks. Any user or reader can change or addcontent to any page. The wiki idea was transferred fromcomputer programming to encyclopedic knowledge pro-duction in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, a commodity trader

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and online entrepreneur with graduate studies in eco-nomics and philosophy as a hobby, and by Larry Sanger,an academic philosopher. They were trying to improvea peer-reviewed encyclopedia, Nupedia (2005). The wikitechnology changed the nature of the project. The projectabandoned the peer-review component and became a free-for-all collaborative space. Lowering barriers to entry andshedding peer review made Wikipedia an instant success.As of January 2010, Wikipedia had more than 11,000,000registered users and more than 3,171,000 entries in its En-glish version (there were more than 200 other Wikipediaversions in various languages, with several other millionentries; Wikipedia 2010a).

Employing a simple Web interface, Wikipedia allowsany site visitor to read and change entries if he or shedisagrees with the content or finds it inaccurate or insuf-ficient. Moreover, Wikipedia users, especially those whoare permanently registered and who actively participatein online conversations on the discussion sections of thesite, also participate in the policymaking process. Pub-lishing contributions, although increasingly filtered by asystem that delays publication or “protects” certain typesof content, is subject to minimal initial mediation by hu-man gatekeeping. On each article page there is an “edit”button; when pressed, it switches the page from a “dis-play” to an “edit” view. Registered readers can changemost articles without having to ask for permission. Mostedits of registered and active users are displayed as soonas they are saved.3

The idea behind this process is to make any reader into aWikipedia coauthor (Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman 2005).The system’s low barriers to entry, both technical and so-cial, encourage users to contribute new content or to par-ticipate in the policymaking process. One of Wikipedia’smost important policies discussed in this manner is the re-quirement that the contributor abide by a NPOV presenta-tion style (Wikipedia 2007). This means that contributorsshould avoid making personal comments or being judg-mental about the various perspectives that might explain aspecific phenomenon. Disputations regarding the neutral-ity of a specific article are to be settled by arbitration, butthis is a difficult and generally avoided process.

In this, as in other Wikipedia contexts, technical andsocial barriers to entry are very low. The expectation of-ten found in wiki projects is that openness will act as aself-healing mechanism, both at the content and at the pol-icymaking level (Viegas, Wattenberg, and Kushal 2004).The open nature of the system will encourage commu-nal editing either of content or of policies via continuouscollective vigilance. The intended end products of thisself-corrective mechanism are knowledge and policymak-ing processes that are secure in their meaning, clear intheir intentions, and devoid of bias (Sanger 2001).

CONFLICT AND AMBIGUITY ON WIKIPEDIA:THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS AND INQUIRYSTRATEGIES

The assumption of “self-regulation” raises a number ofinteresting and challenging research questions. Althoughthere are many possible approaches, including those fromeconomics, sociology, or psychology, we are still at thevery beginning of understanding the concrete mechanismsby which editorial and political self-regulation is accom-plished. At first sight, the self-regulation concept seems tosuggest a smooth, harmonious interaction between benev-olent users who give each other feedback and help oneanother make the best decisions, use the best terms, andpropose the most efficient policies. This vision of cooper-ation was one of our own assumptions when we set out tounderstand how the Wikipedia policymaking process han-dles pluralism, diversity, and bias. Yet some evidence fromthe existing literature (Bryant, Forte, and Bruckman 2005;Forte and Bruckman, 2008; Stvilia et al. 2005a, 2005b;Viegas, Wattenberg, and Kushal 2004) and our own inter-pretive analysis of the debates that surround the NPOVpolicy reveal that social processes are often conflict-ridden, and that rules and their meanings are continuouslydisputed on Wikipedia and suffused with ambiguity.

This insight resonates with prior research on other on-line or open-content environments. A number of earlystudies that date as early as the 1990s mention the roleof conflict in shaping online environments (Kollock andSmith 1996; Lea and Spears 1991; Postmes, Spears, andLea 1998; Smith and Kollock 1999). More recently, astudy of collaboration practices in a free software com-munity (Elliott and Scacchi 2003) revealed that conflictis at the heart of the open-source collaborative process,where it plays an equally important role in structuring andrenegotiating rules and principles.

A study of the Wikipedian editorial process revealedthat one of the most frequent topics of debate amongWikipedia contributors is the meaning and significanceof their definitions (Stvilia et al. 2005b). Stvilia et al.(ibid.) found that eight of twenty-two salient issues in thediscussion pages that accompany Wikipedia entries referto definitions and meaning. These issues included lan-guage misinterpretations/mistakes; stylistic choices, suchas wording; semantics; and subjective meanings. This em-phasis on interpretation of meaning, which was also iden-tified in more traditional virtual community interactions(Matei 2005), suggests a social environment characterizedby conflict as a structural characteristic.

At the same time, Kriplean, Beschastnikh, McDonald,and Golder (2007) identified conflict and ambiguity assome of the constant elements of discussions carried onthe “talk pages”4 of Wikipedia’s most debated or featuredarticles. This is especially true when discussions revolve

CONFLICT AND AMBIGUITY IN WIKIPEDIA 43

around NPOV-related issues. The main provisions of theNPOV policy are often contentiously and ambiguouslyinterpreted. Kriplean et al. (2007) also indicate that notjust the policies but the merits of the very arguments madein support or against a specific rule are disputed and aresurrounded by ambiguity. One of their main conclusionsis that while Wikipedia seeks consensus, this is obtainedthrough “power plays,” which often rely on ambiguity.

Forte and Bruckman (2008) complement these perspec-tives by suggesting that Wikipedia policy is fluid and thatit echoes, rather than prescribes, community practices. In-terviews conducted by Forte and Bruckman (2008) withWikipedia’s members responsible with settling disputesand implementing the site policies reveal that “what isright” is in continuous play. According to an arbitrationcommittee member interviewed by Forte and Bruckman,at no time can a policy be considered to represent the lastword on an issue. This is to be decided by interpretation,which can vary from committee member to committeemember.

Thus, some of the overarching themes of the existingliterature on policymaking on Wikipedia are that conflict isendemic, that practice drives rule-making, not vice versa,and that policymaking and implementation are quite am-biguous. Building on this literature and to better under-stand the particular role played by conflict and ambiguity,we critically examine the manner in which Wikipedia’sNPOV policy is understood and appropriated by the ac-tive registered users who contribute to the debates thatsurround it. Using a critical textual interpretive frame-work inspired by the phenomenological “thick descrip-tion” (Geertz 1973) approach, we aim to untangle the logicof the arguments employed by Wikipedia users involvedin policymaking. We work to reveal how they construct a“structure of meaning”5 by which they make sense of themanner in which Wikipedia is, or should, be run. In theprocess, we discuss the role that conflict and ambiguityplay in sense-making.

Our goal is to explain how users understand the mean-ing of NPOV policy and what strategic games are playedin structuring the Wikipedian policy universe. The theoret-ical vantage point from which we start is that many mod-ern institutions thrive on ambiguity (Bauman 1991). Thelate modern era is dominated by “demassification” tech-nologies that help recover the importance of individualand subjective meanings embedded in human experiences(Weinberger 2002).

With this context in mind, it is natural to ask ifWikipedia’s main social objective might not be, in fact,aligned with other modern institutions. While it is imme-diately intuitive that Wikipedia creates a wider, more com-plex, and different kind of knowledge universe, it is lessclear that Wikipedia produces only knowledge. Could italso produce a sense of empowerment for ordinary individ-

uals who are encouraged to be not only passive consumersbut also creators of knowledge (Herring et al. 2004)? Ifthis is so, and the very tagline of the project, “The freeencyclopedia anyone can edit,” points in this direction,then Wikipedia’s core vision and its cognate technologiesmight reflect a broader contemporary yearning for individ-ualization (Wellman 2001), for personal autonomy, andfor giving voice to the voiceless (Matei 2005). Prolifera-tion of individualism (Fernback 1997) can also producean inflation of opinion, which, in turn, lead to conflict andambiguity.

CRITICAL EXAMINATION STRATEGIES

The interpretive inquiry we undertake in this article aimsto uncover the manner in which the NPOV is disputed andinterpreted by Wikipedia project members. This articleaims to delineate some fundamental trends and meaningsthat can be logically inferred from the most importantdiscussions associated with the NPOV policy. Aligningitself with a genre of inquiry represented by works suchas “Habits of the Heart” by Bellah et al. (1996), Gid-dens’s (1991) “Modernity and Self-Identity,” or Bauman’s(1991) “Ambiguity and Modernity,” our essay aims to re-veal through textual interpretation how specific Wikipediapolicies become ambiguous during their elaboration andcommunity appropriation. The objects of our interpreta-tion are exemplary and central arguments extracted fromthe most important Wikipedia policy debates recorded ona specific Wikipedia collection of pages, the NPOV “talkpages” (Wikipedia 2010b). Our critical strategy is, verybroadly speaking, one of theoretical and critical textual in-terpretation that is similar to hermeneutics and ultimatelyinspired by the “thick description” approach. Accordingto Geertz (1973, 9), the goal of an interpretive analysisinspired by thick description is to “sort out the structuresof signification—what Ryle called established codes—and determining their social ground or import . . . is liketrying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’)a manuscript.” Our overarching point of inquiry is in asimilar manner to “read” or “to construct a reading of”the structure of meaning embedded in the NPOV policydebates.

Our task is to uncover how the online conversations car-ried on the discussion page of the NPOV policy by activeand central Wikipedia members explain how NPOV worksand what role conflict and ambiguity play in the process.To facilitate the process of interpretation and to organizeour inquiry strategy, we direct our attention to two generalquestions, inspired by the theoretical literature reviewedearlier: Are plurality of meaning and ambiguity identifiedas key issues related to implementing NPOV? What isthe relationship between implementation, ambiguity and

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Wikipedia policy statements that overtly speak about neu-trality, objectivity, and univocality of meaning?

SOURCE SELECTION

Although critical interpretation can be applied to a large ar-ray of symbolic phenomena, we chose to focus on writtentexts because we needed a body of evidence that is uncon-troversial as to its formal and substantive boundaries. Touse another Geertzian (1973) term, we decided to focuson the “said” of Wikipedia’s policy debate. Written doc-uments allow for rich interpretation of various levels ofmeaning, while ensuring a specific stability and analyticprecision. Interviews with the authors of the documentscould have added further details to our thick descriptions,but we had neither the resources nor the intention to en-gage in such an activity. Ours is a preliminary essay whosegoal is to determine the conceptual validity of the propo-sition that the implementation of one of Wikipedia’s corepolicies is fundamentally ambiguous. Its ambitions aretheoretical and interpretive, not exhaustively descriptive.Moreover, this article is the first contribution in a seriesof analyses that will employ a variety of qualitative andquantitative methods that aim to reveal the essential socialprocesses that characterize Wikipedia.

The sources analyzed in this article were selected us-ing a “theoretical sampling” methodology (Strauss 1987).Our goal was to identify exemplary documents that bestillustrate the theoretical thrust of the present inquiry. Ex-emplarity is defined in terms of centrality of a specificdocument in a universe of discourse. It also refers to theparadigmatic value of the document and to its ability toinfluence other documents or policies either by its directnorm-setting powers or by its indirect, precedent-creatingcapacity. Exemplarity is defined also in terms of the statusof its creators. The documents should be created by centralactors of the social process/institution studied, and this isprecisely the case in this situation.

Because we are looking at policy issues, we limitedourselves to policy debates when selecting our object ofanalysis. Of these, the obvious candidate is only one.The conversation (“page talk” in Wikipedia parlance) sur-rounding the NPOV policy (Wikipedia 2010b) is of uniqueimportance because it refers to Wikipedia’s most impor-tant policy. It is the product of written exchanges betweenimportant and active Wikipedia members and summarizesthe most important ongoing political, jurisprudence, andrule-making discussions related to the NPOV policy. Thiscorpus of texts is as important for Wikipedia as the Fed-eralist Papers are for the U.S. constitutional theory, if wewere to use a more immediately graspable metaphor.

Our choice was made after exhaustive reading and an-notation of all discussions available on the NPOV discus-sion page. These included all discussions between 2001,

when Wikipedia was founded, and the end of February2007, the date when the data were collected, for a totalof twenty-seven archived discussion (“talk”) pages, con-taining 413 discussion threads, and more than 2.1 millioncharacters (Wikipedia 2010b).

Following the strategy used by Kriplean et al. (2007),we decided to choose our main analytic material fromamong the longest conversations. From the 413 threads ofdiscussions, the seven longest discussion threads accountfor 13 percent of the entire corpus of text. This indicatesthat the conversations surrounding the NPOV policy fol-low a power-law distribution, where a few conversationsfocalize a far greater proportion of the debate than the rest.The top ranking threads are typically eight to sixteen timeslarger than a discussion thread of median size. Attractingthe bulk of conversation, they can be considered central inthe NPOV-related debate space.

However, not all seven longest discussion threads areequally consequential in the overall discussion aboutNPOV. In terms of significance, practical impact, breadthof problems discussed, and length the seventh, “NPOV,”the second, “Undue weight and prominent adherents,” thefifth, “POV selective fact suppression,” and the sixth,“Undue weight,” are clearly more important than theother three, titled “The last paragraph of NPOV,” “Pseu-doscience subsection,” and “Pseudoscience and NPOV.”While the last three discussions are dedicated to a verysmall, technical detail (first), or to a substantive issue,pseudoscience, the first four deal with some of the mostimportant issues involved in applying NPOV, especiallythe general meaning and the relevance criteria to be usedwhen employing NPOV. Yet even these four focal poli-cies can be differentiated in terms of topic significance.Of these, the seventh longest, titled “NPOV,” captures avery direct and much broader and general conversationabout the strategic meaning of NPOV. In consequence,our discussion is concentrated mainly on it.

To conclude and to return to the Federalist Papers anal-ogy, the selected conversations are as important in thiscontext as some of the most important essays publishedin the Federalist Papers. Just as we could not understandthe nature of the U.S. social and political process with-out understanding these documents, it would be hard toexplain Wikipedia without the texts chosen for analysishere. Although the weight of our demonstration rests onfour central documents and especially on the “NPOV”thread, we also cite examples of conversations carried inthreads that are of median size. These are used to fleshout some of the ideas captured in the central analysiswith opinions expressed by less prominent users partici-pating in less prominent threads. Finally, we add to ourdiscussion opinions of two Wikipedians, one a formercentral administrator, about the nature of the editorialand policymaking process. Although expressed outside

CONFLICT AND AMBIGUITY IN WIKIPEDIA 45

the NPOV discussion framework, they are significant be-cause they represent important reflections about the NPOVprocess.

THE NPOV POLICY: CONFLICTSAND AMBIGUITIES

As of March 1, 2007, the date of the last conversationthread included in the overall sample, the core statementof the NPOV policy was as follows: “All Wikipedia arti-cles and other encyclopedic content must be written froma neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly andwithout bias all significant views that have been publishedby a reliable source” (Wikipedia 2007). The policy alsostipulates that

The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with con-flicting views. The policy requires that, where there are orhave been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly.None of the views should be given undue weight or assertedas being the truth, and all significant published points of vieware to be presented, not just the most popular one. It shouldalso not be asserted that the most popular view or some sortof intermediate view among the different views is the correctone. Readers are left to form their own opinions. (Wikipedia2007)

The policy is enshrined in a special page on Wikipedia,one of the very few that have a special note posted re-questing the visitors to abstain from editing it unlessthey express a consensus opinion. The policy is writ-ten in the definitive tone of a mandatory rule. It dealswith issues such as bias, fairness of tone, characterizationof other people’s work, article organization, and factualstatements. Despite its relative clarity, the page has beenthrough numerous changes over the years. At the sametime, the policy has been heatedly debated on the dis-cussion space attached to it. Many of its core statements,including its compulsory nature, have been attacked ordiscounted. Moreover, NPOV was interpreted by some asa tool for institutionalizing the opinion of some Wikipediamembers at the expense of others.

Overall, the arguments generally converge on the ideathat in a relativistic world NPOV is an illusory ideal, andthat its interpretation is an open-ended issue. While thisneed not and in fact did not lead to textual ambiguity inso far as the text of the policy is concerned, we contendthat the editorial process and the debates surrounding itare marked by ambiguity. NPOV is not what it explicitlysays, but what the members make of it.

This is illustrated by the exchange about the overallmeaning of the NPOV policy between four highly ac-tive Wikipedians, who are joined during the conversationby two other less prominent project participants actingas sounding boards. The discussion spans a week, De-cember 15–27, 2005, is 28,295 characters long, and is

8.6 times longer than a median-length NPOV related dis-cussion (Wikipedia 2005a). Its contributors were somethe most active participants in all NPOV-related conver-sations, sharing between them almost one-fifth of all thecontributions made to all NPOV discussion pages during2001–7. Of the 321 unique users involved in all NPOV-related discussions carried during 2001–7 for which wehave valid data, the six participants in the selected con-versation were ranked 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 36th, and 117th.Among them, they have made 22 percent off all exchangesto all NPOV discussions carried between 2001 and 2007.Data were available only for accounts active at the time ofcollection and were generated using the tool WikiSense(http://toolserver.org).

The main point of contention is that by stating that all“significant” points of view should be presented in theirown terms, NPOV does in fact encourage opinion, notfact finding. Implicitly, the conversation raises the issuewhether NPOV is enforceable and noncontradictory (i.e.,unambiguous).

The discussion starts on December 15, 2005, when Ben-saccount, the second most active contributor to all NPOVdiscussions, states the nature of the problem:

I think NPOV should be scaled down as much as possible.I think there may be more to neutral articles than neutralpoint of view. For example perhaps Positive tone [at the timea proposed extension to the Wikipedia Policy—our note]should be equally if not more important. I think that havingthe only official policy on Wikipedia relate to point of viewsmay give opinions precedence over facts. (Wikipedia 2005a)

Harald88, the third most active contributor to all NPOVconversations, immediately rejects the proposal, affirmingthat Wikipedia articles are based on facts that most peopleagree on. Saxifrage, the fourth most active contributor,joins Harald88, affirming that purported proliferation ofopinions does not usually happen:

There are some points that are simply not a matter of dispute,and one single editor or small group of editors don’t havethe power to create a dispute where there is none in the“real” world. The consensus process is just as able to identifynonsense and dismissable POVs [points of view, which inWikipedia jargon stands for partisan, subjective opinion—our note] it is to identify when there are competing POVsthat need representation. If an apple farmer was insisting thatthe intro to [the article on] apple be about only the McIntoshthey would be one lone voice in a sea of opposing consensus,and it just wouldn’t happen. [NPOV] is fine, works, and is inline with the goal of the project and NPOV policy. (Wikipedia2005a)

Bensaccount disagrees with the idea that consensus al-ways or even frequently operates. He contends that mostarticles and especially controversial ones are rife with op-posing views, which succeed each other in a never-endingseries of critiques and answers to critiques. Furthermore,

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he reminds his opponents that by demanding that all factsshould be described in terms of opinions generally held,not of truths objectively and positively stated, NPOV isturned by many editors into a club to beat one’s adver-saries with, not a measurement standard. “There is a cer-tain leverage that NPOV provides that allows people tosway the outcome of this process in favour of opinions,”says Bensaccount, adding that each user makes what hewants out of the policy.

Bensaccount continues:

Any time two Wikipedians get into an argument, which isthe first rule to be evoked? (No its not dispute resolution, beserious). The first thing you get is allegations of POV.—WhatI would like is for this rule to be scaled down so that peopledon’t just say “that is a POV, to whom can you attribute it”but also “that is an incorrect fact, how can we correct it.”(Wikipedia 2005a)

He also points out that Wikipedia has become, from asum of all human knowledge, a sum of all human argu-ments. He cites Njyoder, another active Wikipedia user(ranking 55 of 321 contributors to NPOV discussions),who warned the community in a different thread about thefact that Wikipedia is rife with practices that subvert andmake NPOV ambiguous:

[There is a] tendency of articles to give the false appear-ance of NPOV by including a criticism section, but thenproceeding to include a point-counter-point debunking of allthe criticism in said section. . . . Another less common prac-tice [is that] people would rather keep inaccurate and veryPOV information in an article than have that informationcompletely removed, even when they admit that it’s blatantlyPOV. (Wikipedia 2005b)

Joema joins the discussion to support Bensaccount’sposition, summarizing the problem in these terms:

The problem with stressing NPOV as currently defined is itprioritizes devoting space to the pros/cons of any controversywithin the article. A factual article becomes peppered withCrossfire-style pro/con information in the name of NPOV.That dilutes and obscures the main purpose for an encyclo-pedia’s existence—to convey information about the statedtopic. I’m not saying all pro/con positions within an articleshould be eliminated. However these should always be sec-ondary to the topic, and NPOV should be revised to empha-size that. If the topic has extreme controversy associated withit, there should be a separate article about just that aspect.E.g, the average reader should come away from the nuclearpower article educated about that, not knowing little aboutthe topic except that it’s controversial. . . . [U]sing nuclearpower as an example, the equivalent Encarta article empha-sizes the factual aspects of the topic. It does cover somecontroversy, but this is subordinate and secondary. By con-trast the very first page of the Wikipedia article devotes morespace to the controversy than to the topic itself. (Wikipedia2005a)

The discussion reaches its climax when Bensaccountuses the conflicts surrounding the Wikipedia article on aNew Age–inspired psychological theory and therapy, neu-rolinguistic programming (Wikipedia 2005d), as examplefor NPOV’s inability to keep contributors on a clear edi-torial path. He asks his opponents to read the article andto tell him what it is about. Saxifrage answers that it is“a psychological model used by therapists and others.”Bensaccount answers:

Saying NLP is a “model” is meaningless. It is a model ofwhat? From reading the intro one may get the impressionthat NLP is a model of “the relationship between mind andlanguage.” But you notice it doesn’t actually say what it isa model of. It says that Richard Bandler and John Grinderpropose that it models the relationship between mind andlanguage. This is because whether it is or not is unknown.It seems that the only thing actually known about this sub-ject is that it is a collection of self-help recommendations,promoted through the popular psychology and self develop-ment sections of bookshops, and advertised in various mediaincluding the Internet and infomercials. This sentence waspushed out of the intro (probably to keep it NPOV). It is alsoattributed as “the widest opinion on the subject.” I think it islikely that someone disputed this fact, evoking NPOV, andtherefore it had to be pushed out of the intro and attributed. Tome it seems this is an example of NPOV giving precedenceto opinions over facts. (Wikipedia 2005a)

Saxifrage does not reject this interpretation. Some arti-cles might be caught up in the maelstrom of controversyand become vague, he admits. Yet he blames this on thefact that some contributors fail to apply NPOV. He shiftsthe blame from policy to human fallibility.

The article about NLP is currently the turf of a major andlengthy edit war and is currently the subject of Arbitrationbetween multiple editors. The reasons for NLP’s intro beingvague has nothing to do with people’s application of NPOVpolicy and everything to do with editors POV warring “inviolation of” NPOV policy. (Wikipedia 2005a)

Joema responds, however, that human failure is in factpreconditioned by the way in which NPOV works. Peo-ple’s propensity to express opinions is encouraged, notdampened by the policy.

Wikipedia articles over emphasize pro/con viewpoints ona subject, RATHER THAN THE SUBJECT ITSELF. Thisis apparently encouraged by common interpretation of thecurrent NPOV policy. The NPOV article says “write aboutwhat people believe, rather than what is so. . . .” Even if that’snot the intent of NPOV, that’s how people often interpret it.They read an article they feel strongly about, and want to addtheir opinion. (Wikipedia 2005a)

Joema’s point also concludes the discussion. Neither Sax-ifrage nor Harald88 answered back. Either because theyfelt the inadequacy of their argument, or because they de-cided that they did not want to continue the conversation,

CONFLICT AND AMBIGUITY IN WIKIPEDIA 47

they moved on and the conversation died off. There isno summative statement, no conclusion, and no map formoving forward. The discussion aired out some opinionsand staked out some positions. However, it did not solvethe problem raised. Inspection of the NPOV page changelog for the period covering the exchange (December 15–27, 2005) shows that none of the participants made anysignificant change in the policy (Wikipedia 2005c).

Yet the discussion is significant in two ways. One theone hand, the thread reveals that NPOV is indeed inter-preted in various and at times ambiguous ways duringthe editorial process. After all, the two main opponentsin the debate, Saxifrage and Bensaccount, did agree thatthere are situations where NPOV is disregarded or turnedinto a weapon. On the other hand, it is highly significantthat this meta-discussion about NPOV made matters notless but more ambiguous. No participant changed sides,their arguments did not converge, and no conclusion wasdrawn. In essence, the participants agreed to disagree andthe policy remained ambiguous.

Chronic ambiguities, lack of metadiscourse finality, andagreement in disagreement are not unique to the “NPOV”thread. The other three discussion threads chosen for anal-ysis are preoccupied by similar problems and “solved” ina similarly ambiguous manner. The fifth longest thread,“POV selective fact suppression,” tries to deal with mean-ing and argument construction in Wikipedia articles. Thethread is 34,988 characters long, ten times larger than amedian thread, and it spans almost a month (November 8–25, 2005). The participants include frequent participantsto NPOV discussions, such as Harald88 and Saxifrage,already mentioned, and FT2 (fifth most frequent contrib-utor) or Iantresman (tenth). Making what in mass com-munication research is known as a “framing” argument(Scheufele 1999), some of the participants suggested thatformal neutrality need not be violated for an article to bebiased. Selective choice of article topics, supporting factsor even titles can be used to circumvent NPOV. Apyule(the 150th of all 321 contributors to NPOV discussions)believes that selective suppression of facts and evidenceis common Wikipedia practice:

One of the most common forms of violating the strictwikipedia NPOV policy is to selectively remove specific factsfrom an article so as to give a false impression of the truth. Toillustrate how POV selective fact suppression works: Supposethat there is belief A and belief B. Some evidence favors be-lief A and other evidence favors belief B. The NPOV policyis to include all relevant facts in an article. In POV selec-tive fact suppression, evidence that supports one or the otherbeliefs is deleted by the opposition. (Wikipedia 2005b)

The second (April 1–9, 2006; 47,216 characters long;fourteen times greater than the median) and the sixthlongest conversation thread (October 5–December 16,2006, 33,864 characters long, ten times greater than the

median) highlight similar problems, only this time relatedto the NPOV policy provision that space and credibil-ity of various positions should be allocated according totheir closeness to “majority view.” These two discussionspoint to the significant and inherent ambiguities generatedby provisions found in the NPOV section titled “UndueWeight,” which at the time when the debates studied heretook place stated:

NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all sig-nificant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiablesource, and should do so in proportion to the prominence ofeach. Now an important qualification: Articles that com-pare views need not give minority views as much or as de-tailed a description as more popular views, and may notinclude tiny-minority views at all (by example, the article onthe Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, aview of a distinct minority). We should not attempt to repre-sent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deservedas much attention as a majority view, and views that are heldby a tiny minority should not be represented except in articlesdevoted to those views. (Wikipedia 2007)

Citing the opinion of one of Wikipedia’s cofounders,Jimmy Wales, the policy further specified: “If a viewpointis held by a significant minority, then it should be easy toname prominent adherents” (Wikipedia 2007).

The sixth-longest NPOV discussion is particularly pre-occupied with the (too) numerous ways offered by theNPOV policy for defining “undue weight.” Some discus-sion participants believe that these qualifications are in factinvitations to conflict and ambiguity. They feared endlessinterpretation of the standards to be used to determinewhat “undue” means. Yet an attempt to delete these spe-cific provisions from the policy document by the user RonMarshall was rejected and the discussion won no converts.Just as before, there is no conclusion and no road map forfuture policy changes. Again, the participants tacitly toagree to disagree.

The discussion about defining “prominent adherents,”the second longest conversation thread on the NPOV dis-cussion page, suffered a similar fate. Participants failed tocome up with a workable definition for “prominent.” Onereason mentioned by Iantresman (the tenth most frequentcontributor to NPOV discussions) is that certain theories,such as “galaxy formation,” are too broad to have specific“prominent adherents.” After a vivid discussion, no defi-nition is proposed or adopted. Saxifrage intervenes in thisconversation as well, affirming that this NPOV provision,like many others,

is only a rule of thumb, and so is only really meant as anaid to understanding what the NPOV policy considers to be a“minority view.” It’s not meant to be a definitive rule for whatviews should and should not be included, though editors mayfind it incidentally useful in considering a particular view.(Wikipedia 2006)

48 S. A. MATEI AND C. DOBRESCU

Saxifrage’s position highlights the degree to which pol-icy implementation rests on personal discretion in inter-preting the rules and in ambiguity. His opinion carriesexceptional weight, since he is, again, the fourth mostprolific conversation participant on NPOV talk pages.

Many of the other 409 NPOV conversations follow inthe footsteps of the top four discussion threads analyzedalready. As is customary, very few of them end with aspecific plan of action or group consensus. For example,JohnArmagh raises in the 181st longest thread, which at3,714 characters is very close to the thread median sizeof 3273 characters, the thorny issue of moral judgmentsimplied in abstaining from making a moral judgment incases that require such judgment:

I have just been struck by a thought: sometimes the natureof an article makes it a subjective issue, based on points ofview. The fact that these points of view exist, in my viewis factual in itself. Now POV goes against WikiPolicy, Iknow, but the exclusion of POV can mean the omission offacts, leading to an incomprehensive or incorrect dataset.Take World War II: neutral POV in its basic form would notmake any distinction between who was right and wrong—after all Hitler was convinced he was right. . . . Unless thePOVs are noted (and noted as such) then the reader will endup with, if you like, a “neutral bias.” (Wikipedia 2004)

The logical conclusion is that NPOV is an invitation tomoral relativism, which can only fuel expression of per-sonal judgment. Just as described earlier, JohnArmagh’sopinion is countered by other participants, who defend thepractice of determining truth by acclamation. One of theconcluding statements is that “NPOV is more an ideal thana principle in Wikipedia” (Wikipedia 2004).

A thread of similar length, close to the median (2,610characters, ranked 230th), raises the question of how cred-ible can be an article that gives credence to alien abductiontheories. It similarly ends in ambiguous pronouncements.Solver (ranked 109th in Wikipedia conversations) pointedto the fact that certain social phenomena such as the beliefin alien abductions cannot be treated as if they are “so-cial facts” that are confirmed by credible evidence. Beingneutral and citing them even parenthetically legitimizesclaims that are un-creditable:

[In] cases such as Travis Walton abduction,6 where a per-son claims he’s been abducted by aliens . . . the majority ofpeople, here on Wikipedia and elsewhere, would say that theclaims are false. However, saying that on the page wouldactually be POV—likewise, insisting that he was indeed ab-ducted would be POV. (Wikipedia 2004)

Just like before, the other participants in the conver-sations (Taxman, ranked 21st and Wetman, ranked 45th)defend the status quo, insisting that all claims need to bementioned and credited “neutrally.” Solver does not an-swer their castigations; nor does the thread reach a defini-tive conclusion.

Although far from exhaustive, these illustrative po-sitions show how NPOV finds itself in a chronic pro-cess of ambiguity and how conversations end up withoutany clear finality. The repeated requests for clarificationkeep coming back on the discussion pages, while debatesend up by reinforcing the status quo. However, this hap-pens not because the stated policy is unclear, but becauseits philosophical, ideological, and moral assumptions arecontested. This conflict and the many interpretations itgenerated led to a very significant consequence. NPOV isunenforceable in its letter. It becomes, instead, a term thatis used to beat one’s adversaries over the head and justifyforcible impositions of meaning on specific topics. A for-mer Wikipedia administrator, member of the inner circleof top administrators with access to the exclusive editorialmailing list WikiEN-l, describes the process in these terms:

Admins are supposed to be “just another editor with a fewextra buttons,” but too many admins today get drunk on thatpower. They insist that normal editors are “beneath” them,that they should be able to own articles and give their friendsa hand up when content disputes arise. If you’re friends withan admin, rest assured that your buddies will call someonea name, get one called back, and then ask you to punish theother guy for “incivility.” And you’ll do it, too, without amoment’s hesitation, simply because you have the power todo it. (Peters 2006)

Another project participant describes a typicalWikipedia editorial process. His discussion concerns the“swastika” entry:

A link between the Nazi Symbol and Socialism is put up,and later, someone called “Nlight” calls it “presumed non-sense” and removes it. Why? . . . Because he “presumed” itwas “nonsense”, [sic] according to the edit. So now the so-cialist guy has to become a content defender, pulling backhis socialism link with a citation of it. But now here comesRasmus Faber, about 20 minutes later, to undo the social-ist guy’s work and return it to the non-socialist link. Whatis called a “revert war” then occurs, with Socialist guy try-ing desperately to keep his entirely valid Socialist Party linkabout the Swastika alive while Rasmus Faber (who is, as hispage says, a software engineer) repeatedly stops his changesfrom staying.

Throughout “The Battle of January 31”, [sic] the changes goback and forth between Socialist Guy, Rasmus Faber, Nlight,and Mrdice, who, as far as it can be surmised, simply jumpsinto the Melee to “help” Nlight’s valiant attempt to not linkSocialism with the use of it by the Nazi Party. . . .

The story of the swastika’s entry continues after this, forover 1,200 edits. Dozens of people are involved, lots of factsare lost, many are gained . . . and you would be hard, hard-pressed to show why many of these folks should be editingthe Swastika entry in the first place. (Scott 2005)

This perspective highlights some of Wikipedia’s deep-est and least known power dynamics. Topic squatting,

CONFLICT AND AMBIGUITY IN WIKIPEDIA 49

endless debates that end up in personal harassment, rules,and political processes that verge on radical anarchy makeat least some of the political processes on Wikipedia pro-foundly ambiguous. The much vaunted and discussed“consensus” is often no more than expression of powerplays, which is consistent with the conclusions drawn byKriplean et al. (2007). Rules are adapted and twisted tofit the needs of specific individuals and cliques. They ap-propriate editorial “turf,” which is defended at all costs.Appropriation creates multiple centers of power, strate-gic vision, and policymaking, which continuously chaseeach other. In this world, formal rules are unenforceable,peer-to-peer arbitration corrupted by political manipula-tions, and top-down measures (expulsion or censorship)equally powerless or distorted. Truth and “neutrality” be-come whatever users with power (typically administrators)intend it to mean and this is enforced not by intellectualconsensus but by topic “squatting.” Alone or through polit-ical alliances with other members, many leading Wikipedi-ans often make sure that their own perspective of a certainissue is preserved by “patrolling” specific Wikipedia en-tries by using bureaucratic manipulation and persistence.7

Appropriating content and political confrontations overthe right to control specific entries were present in theWikipedia community, as one of its cofounders, LarrySanger, observed from the very beginning (Sanger 2005).In Sanger’s view, when Wikipedia accepted these prac-tices it took a step back from its lofty ideal of true neutral-ity and consensus-based collaboration. This, among otherthings, made him resign from his paid editorial position atWikipedia after only one year.8

In brief, the political process surrounding the NPOVpolicy is defined not in terms of collaborative, fact-oriented, egalitarian effort, but by conflict and by personaland subjective appropriation of meaning and editorial turf.The political process surrounding NPOV is, in the end, theproduct of a perpetual struggle. Any attempt to explain andenforce NPOV as one authoritative policy is deflected byendless and specious interpretation. Moreover, as the dis-gruntled administrator cited earlier indicates, cliques andparties appropriate the meaning of such policies to defendtheir particular interests. Under these circumstances, it be-comes increasingly difficult for any party involved in theadministrative process on Wikipedia to claim the moral oreven procedural high ground. Ambiguity becomes a pre-carious modus vivendi and a default position in dealingwith conflict.

NPOV as a political process—if not as a writtenprescription—is profoundly ambiguous, in terms of bothwhat it means to the actors and how it is applied. Hence,the answer to our first guiding question, “Are pluralityof meaning and ambiguity present in the ’structure ofmeaning’ surrounding the debate around Wikipediandocuments?” is a definite “yes.” Wikipedia’s active

users’ interpretation of its central policy is suffused withambiguity.

Our second guiding question asks, “What is the rela-tionship between ambiguity and Wikipedia policy state-ments that overtly speak about neutrality, objectivity, andunivocality of meaning?” In view of the doubt and dis-putation that surrounds NPOV the ultimate conclusion isthat the policy is ambiguous and its ability to guaranteeobjectivity and neutrality questionable. The actual mannerin which NPOV is interpreted goes, in fact, in a directionthat is opposed to its spirit. In other words, the ideal andthe practices that surround it are at odds with each other.

CONCLUSION

The present article argues that the multiple voices thatcontribute to shaping Wikipedia policies are in a stateof latent conflict, which is partially offset by ambiguity.These processes affect Wikipedia’s most central policy,which its active users interpret and make use of in an am-biguous manner. Ambiguity is, in fact, the thing that makesWikipedia work. By analyzing the manner in which a cen-tral Wikipedia policy, its NPOV, is reinterpreted and ap-propriated by active project members, we detected a con-tinuous process of ambiguization. Ambiguity especiallyaffects the manner in which users interpret the applicationof neutrality policy. This renders it unenforceable in itsspirit. As two participant-observers remarked, NPOV isfrequently used as a justification for personal biases andfor defending the turf staked out by central Wikipedianplayers (administrators and system operators; see Scott2005; Peters 2006).

The practical drift toward ambiguity on Wikipedia re-flects the contemporary sensibility of an increasingly “net-worked individualistic” mindset (Wellman 2001), drivenby the imperative of subjective appropriation of knowl-edge (Weinberger 2002). As Stvilia et al. (2005) aptly putit, Wikipedia “changes . . . a traditional positivist approachof encyclopedia construction, which assumes that there isalways one truth and a certain predictable level of quality,to a constructivist, ‘grounded’ approach, which assumesthat there are always multiple truths and quality, and theychange over time.” While Wikipedia projects an externalimage of “objective” and “neutral” knowledge, the verymeaning of neutrality and objectivity in its core policy isconstantly disputed. Neutrality is profoundly altered to re-fer to ambiguous, precarious, and ever-shifting definitions,moving with the social processes that produce them.

One of the overarching conclusions of this essay is thatthe conflicts and ambiguity present at the level of inter-preting Wikipedia rules are not extraneous, but centralingredients of this wiki project, which naturally developsfrom the pluralist and nonhierarchic nature of the mediumand of the culture that brought it to life. Furthermore, the

50 S. A. MATEI AND C. DOBRESCU

Wikipedian project, although simple and seemingly effi-cient, raises multiple and tightly connected issues aboutrelativity of values, meaning, credibility, ephemerality,and truth adjudication.

As revealed earlier in this article, some importantWikipedia supporters seem to have accepted that neutral-ity is not entirely applicable or useful. They have been re-defining the concept of neutrality for themselves for sometime, which has led to a tendency of personally appropri-ating content via practices such as “patrolling” entries andreverting massive editorial changes of other Wikipediansif they do not correspond with a subjectively defined stan-dard of “neutrality.” These behaviors are embedded in aspecific power structure, which emerges in a context ofambiguity.9

Overall, Wikipedia is a fascinating topic of study andrequires careful examination of its underlying social andcultural processes. We hope that the conversation that ourarticle initiated will lead to a rigorous dialogue about thenature of the social and cultural process reflected by theWikipedian project. The future research topics, as sug-gested, are numerous and the many unanswered questionstantalizing.

NOTES

1. Although we believe that ambiguity also shapes Wikipedia’scontent, we limit our focus to conversations surrounding the policy-making process. Content ambiguity, although on our research agenda,is not addressed here.

2. “Wiki” is the Hawaiian word for “quick,” denoting the speed atwhich changes can be operated.

3. Most changes operated by users who have registered beforeJune 2006 are implemented immediately. Users registered after thisdate have to wait for a period of four days before having their changesvalidated. Some topics, however, are only editable by a self-nominatedand self-selected body of administrators and bureaucrats. These ed-itorial strategies were implemented in the wake of the Seigenthalercontroversy (Seigenthaler 2005; Wikipedia 2010c). A former RobertKennedy aide, he threatened to sue the project for slander when hisWikipedia biography falsely accused him of involvement in the con-spiracy to assassinate his former employer.

4. All wiki pages have a kind of “front” and “back.” Using tabsfound at the top of each wiki page, readers can constantly switchbetween the main content of a page, recorded on its “front,” and its “talkpage,” found on its “back.” The later contains a series of comments andannotations, sometimes organized in threads, contributed by the variousreaders of that page. A content page can have one active and severalarchived talk pages, if the discussion has stretched over a long periodof time.

5. Structure of meaning, a term borrowed from the Geertzian the-ory of culture (Geertz 1973), signifies the collection of interpretationsand symbols that individuals use to make sense of a situation. In thisparticular case it refers to the system of interpretations that Wikipediausers generate to explain to themselves what NPOV means. It does notrefer to the content of said policy.

6. The Walton abduction is an alien-abduction narrative, madefamous by a book and by a 1990s science-fiction movie (Walton 1996).

7. “Patrolled article”—an entry that is watched by specific users—is a well-known term in Wikipedian lingo, and the software that powersWikipedia has specific interface affordances that encourage monitoringand reverting the edits made by “outsiders.”

8. Sanger affirms that he is the one who initially proposed theapplication of the wiki concept to the encyclopedic project (Sanger2005).

9. Despite recent changes in the editorial process, which requirea “cooling-off” period after three consecutive editorial reversals and anew policy of content protection by which editing of specific articlescan be frozen for all or some users, such as the case for the GeorgeW. Bush article, there is no sign that patrolling and editorial changesdefined by the right of the most persistent will end any time soon. Theedit history lists of Wikipedia articles continue to grow at a fast pace.Blocking editing, which is usually decided by existing Wikipedianbureaucrats and administrators with tenure and a stake in some of thetopics, can only freeze truth in its current state, rather than reducing itsoverall level of ambiguity.

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