Wikipedia talk:Delegable proxy/Abd's message

Copy of mail sent to: English Wikipedia

At 12:23 PM 2/8/2008, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 2/8/2008 9:21:00 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,

>ian.woollard@gmail.com writes:

>

>I cannot be kind about this, these people are engaging in, or

>recommending OR, and are trying to hide behind the cloak of consensus.

>

>We don't want or need consensus in the Wikipedia, we want *informed*

>consensus.>>

>---------------------------

>When experts are "called in" to give opinions in contentious issues, the

>warriors cite Canvassing and Meatpuppetry.

>

>How do we address that?

Favorite question, actually. This happens to be my specialty, i.e.,

the theory of how very large organizations might be able to

efficiently measure consensus, plus guarantee (at least in general)

that the consensus is an informed one.

I apologize for the length of this, but I don't have time to edit it

down, so ... following the principles implied herein, if anyone finds

this of value, commenting on it and repeating what seems important

about it could be very useful. It is not necessary that everyone read

this, and, indeed, one person might be enough. So, if it serves you

to read it, great. If not, I will not be offended if anyone passes it by.

We might notice that the problem described above is a generic

organizational one, and it starts to bite organizations when they

reach a level where, for example, if everyone shows up at a meeting,

or even a major fraction do so, the meeting becomes too large to

function, plus there is classic participation bias. Participation

bias is a double-edged sword. On the other hand, it tends to favor

decisions being made by the informed. However, there is also a higher

incentive to participate on the part of those who are biased in some

way, who have an axe to grind. So direct democracies, such as New

England Town Meeting, tend to be replaced when the town size reaches

a level that the number of fanatics and blowhards and tenacious

debaters becomes large enough -- they are a certain percentage of any

population that does not exclude them -- to raise the noise to a

point that the meetings start to break down, the gatherings become

tedious, expand the time consumed, increasing participation bias even

further. Familiar?

Mailing lists and the like (including internet forums, which is what

project or talk pages are on Wikipedia) increase the manageable

scale, because, unlike the case with face-to-face meetings, readers

can selectively read, they do not have to sit through a long and

boring speech, and, if there is voting involved, they only need pay

attention to actual and generally short questions, plus, to be

informed, they may read a few posts from writers they trust, or skim

over what has been posted. However, there comes a point where, again,

the noise level is too great. That is not a specific size, because

there are mailing lists with tens of thousands of subscribers that

remain functional -- though mostly because these lists aren't really

trying to make any kind of decisions, they are only discussing. When

they try to make controversial decisions, there can be, if there is

no process to prevent it, eruptions of highly contentious posts. At a

certain point, though, *any* open mailing list is going to run into

the problem of scale. I am only here considering unmoderated lists.

There are classic solutions or processes, each one unsatisfactory

from various perspectives:

(1) Electoral democracy, where elected representatives reduce the

number of participants. The big problems with elections is that

security issues are raised: who can vote (sock puppets?), how do they

vote, and who counts the vote. Further, whenever there is an

election, there are losers, which may represent voters who end up

unrepresented. There are voting systems that ameliorate this problem,

so some kind of electoral democracy can be a solution, and this is

generally how societies, when the exercise of sovereignty is

concerned, have moved, and this and the second solution are the

approach generally taken by nonprofits.

(2) Oligarchical control. There is single person or a small number of

persons who have decision-making authority, and membership

participation is limited to advising those people. Electoral

democracy is, in one sense, oligarchical, but I distinguish this here

by considering that the oligarchy is a fixed oligarchy, not subject

to election but which elects its own continuing participants. This is

actually the Wikipedia formal control structure, but it

operationally, for the most part, defers to the third process.

(2) Anarchist approaches such as are (more or less) the status quo on

Wikipedia, which works much better than some would expect but which

turns out to be, as well, horrifically inefficient in ways that, in

my opinion, will make it unsustainable. Like consensus process in

voluntary communities, over the years, participation declines as

people decide that they have better things to do that sit in tedious

meetings, going through what it takes to find consensus. (Note that I

am in favor of finding consensus, and am merely pointing out that

traditional methods of finding it, when the group size gets large,

become increasingly impractical). This approach does have legs, as

Wikipedia shows; but participation bias can, again, cause the

apparent consensus, as was being pointed out, to deviate from what

would be a true consensus if one explained the situation to every

member and asked them to vote.

(3) Proxy democracy, as practiced in the business world (where it is

a democracy of property, i.e., own so many shares, one gets so many

votes, and may assign those votes at will, to anyone, to cast. This

allows, in theory, all shareholders to be represented at an annual

meeting, whereas only a few are actually present. It is rigorously

democratic, in theory, but in practice various conditions have

developed that frustrate it, including large numbers of uninformed

shareholders who assign proxies on request by the board of trustees,

thus making proxy revolutions very difficult. As an example, the

California State Automobile Association is a proxy democracy: members

each get one vote. But this organization, like many in its class, was

founded by people selling insurance, if I'm correct. And the board

sends out proxy solicitations, which enough members helpfully sign

and send back, that when an insurgent (perhaps pursuing his own

agenda as a trial lawyer) tries to mount a candidacy to represent

other interests than those of insurance companies (which only

partially coincide with those of motorists), it's almost impossible,

and there is no means of reaching the members directly, often, since

the board controls access to the membership list and member

addresses. But it is proxy democracy that contains the seeds of a

solution, because it can create full representation without

elections. Proxy democracy has seen little use in most nonprofits;

however, as an example, some Green parties allow members to name

proxies for voting at conventions; anarchists have commonly opposed

this because it can create a situation where the anarchists have a

majority at the convention, but are outvoted by those holding

proxies. This opposition to proxy voting is actually quite generic,

and most nonprofit membership organizations prohibit proxy voting,

and discussing why this is the case is not necessary here, except to

say that it is basically the same argument, made by the oligarchy

that has effective control through participation bias, and believes

that this control is essential for organizational success.

Wikpedia actually incorporates, already, many elements of what I

would consider an advanced system. In particular, one critical aspect

of such would be the separation of judgement from power. That is,

there is advice and there is action, and the advice, properly, should

be disconnected from action; this principle is more commonly known as

the "independence of the judiciary," and represents avoidance of the

direct exercise of power by judges. While it may appear that judges

control, generally they do not; rather they issue decisions which may

be considered binding, but the judges themselves typically cannot

compel compliance themselves; rather, public servants ("the executive

branch") act as authorized by the decision of a judge, and if the

public servants refuse to act, the judges have no power. But, of

course, that is not normally what happens.

With Wikipedia, ArbComm is technically only advisory. Jimbo Wales is

not legally obligated to follow the decisions of ArbComm. Nor is an

apparent community consensus binding on anyone. Rather, an ArbComm

decision or an apparent consensus are enforced, if they are enforced,

by individuals entrusted with enforcement powers, and none of them

can be compelled to exercise that power, unless they choose,

themselves, to be bound, and, if I'm correct, such choices are

revocable. Ultimately, legal authority over Wikipedia is in the hands

of the Foundation, i.e., the Board. The community consensus advises

the Board, and the Board would disregard it at its own peril.

Legally, however, the Board is obligated (and the members legally

obligated, with possible teeth of they neglect the obligation) to

insure that Wikipedia, for example, acts responsibly, for the

protection of the public, so it is possible that a clear community

consensus could appear, perhaps requiring certain expenditures, and

the Board properly would refuse if it considered this fiscally

unwise, risking bankruptcy and thus harm to the public.

So what is the function of the community consensus on Wikipedia? It

is to generate and express advice, whereby the community advises

itself and its servants and those who hold responsible positions as

volunteers or employees. The consensus does not control directly, but

it may effectively do so; in each case, however, each action of

control is at the discretion of individuals entrusted with the power of action.

This kind of organizational/legal structure has been used before,

with phenomenal success. It was used by the model for what I call

Free Associations. Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous,

carefully studied what had caused similar temperance movements to

fail in the past, and he consciously designed AA to avoid the

pitfalls. He separated AA itself from the service board known as AA

World Services, Inc. AA itself "ought never be organized," but then

he went on, "but we may create service boards or committees directly

responsible to those they serve." There is no central control in AA,

not over the fellowship itself, nor over meetings or members.

Individual meetings are fully independent, and may, if they choose,

defy even a very strong majority opinion in AA (even what can be

called a consensus), normally without any consequence at all. But it

doesn't happen much! Each meeting is self-supporting; no action is

taken centrally to start or help maintain local meetings. There is,

however, a representative conference once a year, using delegates

elected by a special process calculated to facilitate the development

of consensus at the conference level by including some representation

of significant minority opinion. I'm not presenting AA as perfect, it

isn't, but it is very, very good at showing how anarchistic

structures can function and be extraordinarily successful. Whatever

one might think of the AA program, it became, in a few short years,

almost the only show in town, and there is, in fact, at least one

meeting in every town in North America and in many around the world.

However, AA was able to succeed largely because there are very few

decisions to be made on the level of the overall organization. Every

meeting is independent, and decisions are made by those who

participate, and there is no enforced common standard. It would be as

if, here, there were no enforceable policies and the editorial

standards for every article were determined by the editors of that

article. (To some extent, this is true, and it is both beneficial and

harmful, depending. A consensus of editors can pretty much get away

with anything, until and unless the consensus breaks, by an editor

noticing it who thinks it wrong. It is not a consensus any more.)

Universal membership is an important aspect of this. With a few

exceptions -- which have been vigorously debated and are debated

still -- every AA meeting is open to every AA member, and membership

in AA is self-defined. I.e., say you are a member, you are a member

unless it is proven otherwise. "The only requirement for membership

is a desire to stop drinking." Further, "Any two alcoholics gathered

together for the purpose of sobriety may call themselves an AA

meeting, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation."

This "other affiliation means, as I understand it, that there is no

"Baptist AA," where you would have to be a Baptist to attend the

group. (However, the exceptions: there are women's meetings and men's

meetings and there are, I think, some gay and lesbian meetings; these

are theoretically violating the AA traditions -- but they also have

Rule Number One, IAR. As long as those who maintain local meetings

lists don't exclude the meeting from lists, there has been no

consequence; meeting lists will warn potential attendees of any such

special requirement, and these special meetings don't exist in areas

where alcoholics don't have lots of other options.)

But what would happen if the scale became very large, with common

standards being expected for all meetings? In AA, meetings do tend to

have strong resemblances, and there are strong traditions about, for

example, no cross-talk, i.e,. avoiding commenting directly on what

others have said, focusing on "principles, not personalities." But

there is no overall rule requiring this, with sanctions against those

who violated it. Comment on someone's sharing of their experience,

and the most that is likely to happen is that people will shun you,

or quietly suggest to you that it was inappropriate. (On the other

hand, AA is composed of human beings, including some who are quite

contentious, sometimes still fueled by their disease, and so whatever

can happen probably does happen, occasionally, at AA meetings. I've

only been to open meetings, I am not an alcoholic, but an observer of AA.)

Here, we have an encyclopedia to build and maintain. It is expected

that certain common standards will be maintained, and maintaining

them requires increasing precision of definition, plus application of

the standards to real situations, which constantly vary in

implications, there are exceptions to every rule except one.

So how to judge? This is where structure comes in. Wikipedia has a

combination of the above described forms, but most decisions are made

through the anarchist model, subject to participation bias. And,

above, there is one method described that can balance out

participation bias without excluding minority opinion, and that is

proxy representation. However, creating a proxy structure could seem

to be adding complexity and perhaps bureaucracy, and, when

suggestions like this are made, most think of proxies as holding

power, controlling. But if we look at proxies as elements in a system

that only advises, but does not control, the picture changes. The

security issues disappear. The elements we love about Wikipedia, such

as "no voting," -- which means that decisions are made by servants

based on arguments presented, not votes -- are retained. However,

sometimes the process by which arguments are presented is

horrifically inefficient, sucking in the expenditure of huge amounts

of editor time, and often frustrating to all sides, plus, of course,

a lot of it is, indeed, voting. I don't know what "Delete, per nom"

means, otherwise. Obviously a lot of Wikipedia editors think we are

voting in an AfD.

(In AA, the General Service Conference controls nothing, but its

advice is respected. It nominates Board members, which the Board

routinely elects. It approves of edits to publications, to insure

that they reflect consensus. -- a "consensus" for these purposes is

considered a 2/3 vote at the Conference level.)

Contentious decisions commonly involve interpretations of guidelines

and policies where it is possible that there are quite legitimate

alternate interpretations. While the theory of the process is that it

is arguments that are being considered, not votes, in the end, in

practice, an actual decision is made by one person, sometimes a

person who has less experience and understanding of the arguments

than those who commented. In the end, this is one person's decision.

I would keep it exactly that way, but I would focus on what advice

that person has received and to what extent it may be considered to

be the collective understanding of the community. Suppose we had a

proxy system -- never mind how we would get it for the moment, please

-- so that there were a few commentors, each one of which presented a

different comment, it becoming a tradition not to repeat comments,

i.e., not to make comments of the form, "Me too." So there might be,

with a controversial decision, two comments. Are they equal in power?

Presently, in theory, yes. The decision maker has the right to

choose, or even to make some totally different decision, having been

advised. (in this case the most common decision would be no

consensus, perhaps with renomination seeking additional comment.)

But, now suppose that one of these comments is from a high-level

proxy, representing, directly or indirectly, 99% of Wikipedia

registered users who have participated in such a system, and lets

suppose there are, at least, thousands of them. This person has been

massively trusted as being likely to have a good understanding of the

issue and to comment fairly and neutrally (or, at least, representing

in some sense the POV of those who chose him or her). And the other

comment is from a new editor, who has been trusted by no one. *other

things being equal,* which has more weight? Indeed, which decision is

more likely to stick and not be reversed.

I can imagine some immediate objections, so I urge a careful reading

of the above. "Other things being equal" is very important. This

includes, for the deciding administrator, indecision as to which

argument presented is the best. First of all, is this an inconclusive

decision, "No consensus"? I'd suggest not! The fact is that admins do

use the number of "votes" to determine the validity of a decision,

and will consider the existence of opposing arguments as not relevant

if one side is snowed. Decisions contrary to the majority are made,

but I've never seen a snowed expression of opinion reversed by an

administrator. But snowing takes up editor time. Rather, I'd suggest,

weighting "votes," acknowledging them as votes, *but not making them

binding*, is actually the Wikipedia way, it is what has been done *to

a degree*, already. All that a proxy system would do is to measure

participation (how many editors participated in the decision-making

process, directly and indirectly) and the sense of the community (how

many editors may we predict would vote a certain way if asked.)

(In this example, even though one proxy represented thousands of

users, a careful decision maker might want to see at least one

concurring opinion, and for the proxy or any user to contact another

user to look at the issue could be quite appropriate. Here, I'm sure,

if this were a matter of weight, we'd see more comments anyway, and,

given the position of the proxy, if this is working, it's highly

likely there would be some confirmation. But what I'd predict we

would not see is an MfD with 600 votes and highly repetitious argument.)

Now, as to the latter, when proxy systems are proposed, one of the

most common objections is "How can I be sure that the person I pick

will vote the way I would want." The answer, of course, is that you

can't. A proxy should be chosen as a person one you consider most

likely to make a good decision if you don't participate. In the

example above, with that high-level proxy, suppose you were a client

of that proxy. You might watch what your proxy is doing, and if you

see a vote you don't like, you simply vote yourself, effectively

cancelling your vote. If this happens more than rarely, you would

properly consider changing your proxy assignment. But, I suspect,

most people would not watch their proxy unless someone called

misbehavior to their attention. (If a proxy is blocked such that the

proxy cannot continue to function, i.e, more than transiently, all

the direct clients, I'd think, should be notified. But all this can

be done without formal structure to do it.)

I've been thinking of Delegable Proxy, where proxies are considered

to be delegable, so if A names B and B names C, then C, in the

absence of A and B, represents both of them. DP is indefinitely

scalable, the "hierarchy" it creates is bottom-up, a fractal (hence

"fractal democracy" is one of the names for this), requiring no

elections, only a list of proxy assignments. Wikipedia needs no

special tools to do this, it is all in place, everything needed,

except people assigning proxies. No policies or guidelines need be

changed, no additional burden placed on anyone that is not

voluntarily assumed, no power transferred from those who currently

hold it. No bureaucracy is needed, beyond the thinnest.

Closing administrators would not be required to consider proxy

expansion of votes. Any user could expand votes using the proxy list.

(It's not hard to do it by hand, even with thousands of votes

involved, but there are also tools being developed and I assume that

there will be quite adequate ones available readily as open-source software.)

Now, why would I think that the vote of a proxy would estimate

overall consensus "if the users were asked." First of all, of course,

the proxy only estimates the consensus of those represented by the

proxy, and a collection of proxies only would estimate the consensus

of all those collectively represented by those proxies. However,

proxies and clients will directly communicate. I would never name a

proxy that I could not contact directly and reasonably expect a

response. One person representing thousands of users, directly, is

probably going to do a very poor job of communicating with them, and

the vote of this person, I might tend to discount. (And proxy

analyses, in the end, are the ultimate responsibility of the one

doing the analysis, who is not bound as to how to do it, the analyst

could, for example, deweight or even ignore the votes originating

with new accounts, or could deweight or ignore votes coming from

identified users with strong POVs being pushed, or according to any

standard at all. People analyze proxy expansions in order to help

themselves make decision, or to advise others who trust the accuracy

of the expansion. It's personal.)

Now, I've actually only scratched the surface of what could become

possible with a proxy network in place. Collectively, the users have

disposable income and resources that dwarf those of WikiMedia

Foundation. If the users are coherently connected as is hinted here

-- don't think that this description, while it is long, is in any way

complete -- and there were some financial emergency, extraordinary

sums could be raised in very short order, with practically no effort.

All you have to do is convince a *few* high-level proxies and they

will quickly and efficiently do the rest, through personal contact.

My proxy would have my phone number. It's an automatic telephone

tree, the person calling me to ask for a donation would be the one I

chose as trustworthy. Note that this is *not* some central decision

being made to ask all members for a donation -- as happens with the

current system (but not personally), and that I'm not proposing this

as a change; I said "emergency." And those proxies who thought it was

a bad idea simply wouldn't do it. But, before any action was actually

taken, there would be a reasonable estimate of success, based on a

poll and proxy expansion of it.

The same with decisions about guidelines and policies. If there is an

RFC, and for any given editor, we may assume that, roughly, an

individual editor is likely to accept and follow a guidelines that

has received the assent of his or her proxy, plus, of course, the

proxy may have explained it to the client. Every user is more likely

to think of guidelines and policies as being created by "us," rather

than from on high; I think there is currently some cynicism as to how

much guidelines and policies currently reflect actual community

consensus, and this, in turn, fosters disregard for them.

None of this would cause any *immediate* change. Am I calling for

action? Not much! However, if these ideas are of interest, a reader

might followup on what occurred to me as a joke, more or less, I

registered a sock puppet, User:The Community. This came from a

comment by User:Zenwhat on the Village Pump, asking sarcastically,

after it had been noted that the community was ignoring source

reliability guidelines, "How can we block The Community (TM) for

disruption?" Well, it's possible now.

But that account isn't going to be used for any editing outside the

User page and Talk page, and quite possibly none there as well,

except as authorized by, at least, some actual community.

And, in fact, I'm not likely to do much at all there, in terms of

implementing, for example, a proxy list and explaining and proposing

other details, if there is not at least one editor who seconds the

effective motion to create this account to serve as a "secretary" for

the community. Right now, I'm user "The Community," but, as such,

since I have not been advised by the community by any means which I

consider truly representative, I must, in that function, remain

silent, and I am merely a volunteer serving temporarily until replaced.

None of the actual actions that I would propose, if this second

appears and there is some level of participation, will require

overall community approval. They are all legitimate under current

guidelines and procedures and would be highly unlikely to be

disruptive in any way. On the other hand, it is possible that some

will consider this threatening for various reasons. As an example,

people who are very comfortable with the status quo, who believe that

they understand the best interests of Wikipedia better than the

average user (and they are probably right), may think that this could

have an ultimate effect of reducing their influence. While they may

be correct, I'd suggest that a system as I would envision it could

enable them, if they are correct about their wisdom and

understanding, to become more effective with less effort. Such people

would naturally become high-level proxies if they do, in fact,

represent the mature understanding of the community and wish to so

serve. High-level proxies would be proxies who have been trusted by

those who are themselves heavily trusted. These higher-level proxy

assignments would be those made by experienced Wikipedians, who know

very well the details of how this user operates, and the depth of

understanding and integrity shown in his or her edits. Proxy

democracy is a peer system, even though it tends to create a

hierarchy, rooted in personal judgement and trust.

If it does not work, very little effort will have been expended. No

software changes (unless it turns out to work well enough to justify

that; there are already people working on public-source delegable

proxy systems and I could see the possibility that MediaWiki might

reasonably have a proxy field for each user and some tools for

calculating proxy expansions, though I, myself, prefer to *not* make

proxy expansion a central tool, for security reasons.)

I am calling a meeting for the purpose of considering the voluntary

and decentralized implementation of proxy democracy on Wikipedia, for

purposes as described above, and I have reserved a space for it, User

Talk:The Community. I have, there, volunteered, as User:The

Community, to serve as temporary chair of that meeting. Considering

this as a motion to elect, if there is a second to that motion,

discussion of it may begin there. (If it is seconded, amendments

would be in order to change the designated secretary, or the duties,

or whatever.) Currently, there has been a little discussion, from a

user, one of the unsung Wikipedia heroes who patrol new page

creation, wondering WTF this was about. Other than that, while the

formation of the account was mentioned on the Village Pump, policy

page, it appears to have been unnoticed.