Book:The Disorder of Order

 

I. On Maintaining Order

As previously established, the central task of the administration of any wiki is broadly to maintain its harmony, which we have defined as the creation of a site which promotes the general welfare of its contents and contributors, by ensuring that new additions are welcomed, present additions are maintained, and conflict which threatens content is curtailed. It is generally well established that maintaining “order” is a component of harmony, in the sense that disorder could theoretically impair the ability of users to use and enjoy the wiki to its fullest extent. In the naturally functioning state of affairs the wiki is an open encyclopedia in which any and all are welcome to contribute to it.

Let us consider the attitude of the admin regarding his relation to the establishment of order. As we have seen, a central goal of the adminship is the perpetuation of order. This creates a conflict of interest, whereby the admin’s view of order is not necessarily in the best interest of overall prosperity. It is established that the wiki is governed to a set of rules established on the wiki by its users, whereby the community cedes some responsibility to the administration to carry out policing in the name of the rules’ enforcement. It is plainly assumed that anything is allowed on the wiki that which is not banned by the rules. It is an absolute necessity that the maximum number of things be allowed that are within the rules and the scope of the alternate history genre, because otherwise the removal of some things necessarily disincentivizes some activity.

This is both because it removes people interested in posting those items, and because it sets a precedent to the rest of the community that the administration could in theory remove certain items in general, thereby making less people comfortable with the reliability of harmony on the wiki for their items. He who is concerned that his work may one day be deleted off the wiki or not welcomed is far more likely to take it off the wiki, or to be less enticed to join the wiki in the first place over that of another wiki. Our present wiki competes with other similar sites who provide an alternate history experience, so it is in the best interest of the wiki to make itself most competitive by presenting itself as the most fair. This is paramount because as we’ve seen the welcoming of users, and ensuring they remain comfortable on the wiki, is the crucial aspect of expanding the wiki to ensure its survival and perpetuation, and losing the backing of users threatens to make the wiki dysfunctional.

II. On Maintaining Disorder

The Harm Principle

Of course, this is not to say that anything must be tolerated on the wiki. As the wiki is for the purpose of alternate history it is accepted that the wiki should cater to alternate history and things that fall within that genre. Once more, it is morally permissible for rules to regulate what falls within this scope. Therefore, other than the obviously non-alternate history, what should not be allowed on the wiki? The community argued, that which impedes others. That is to say, any and all alternate history content is allowed in so far as it does not prevent the creation of another user’s alternate history content. This means we must demonstrate that a piece of content impairs the ability of others or their content to be welcome on the site in order for that content to be too harmful, such that we have no choice but to infringe on its right to exist on the site. What impedes on another’s ability to use the site? We could reason that something that is inflicting direct emotional harm, by being for the purpose of harassment, ought not exist, because harassment directly disincentivizes the victim to remain on the wiki. I.e. hate speech should be curtailed in so far as it harms the victims of the speech, more than the hate speech does not harm.

This is a broad notion of “harming the site”: actively harming its userbase from wanting to use the site. This is not to say the actual functioning of the site is mechanically harmed, meaning at no point is a user prevented from actively creating a page. Yet, we increasingly see the opposite assertion referred no matter how plainly inaccurate. This is because we have transferred the responsibility of determining what harms the site from the community itself to an increasingly narrow elite group, who have it in their personal self interest to define “harm” as that which conflicts with their class interests. In the era of older modes of production, this meant the opposition to map games and their near ban, as well as the many attempts to regulate them, for example. In general, the admins possess the interpersonal relations that which create animosity against their foes, and the disproportional amount of power to transgress against their foes through their interpretation of the rules. This brings us to the elitist subjectification of the harm principle. The admin effectively dilutes the definition of harm to mean “what I don’t like”, and he acts with the force of the law against it.

Harm Principle Abuse

The consequence is that as the admin-user cycle increasingly intensifies, the objective assessment of harm is continually lost in favor of increasingly subjective and negative interpretations. It is plain to see the increase in the admins’ use of the most nefarious accusation: “he is disrupting the wiki”. What does this mean? It is whatever is politically expedient. Based on the importance of “order” and the necessity of maintaining it, the admin has diluted order to mean the state in which they are not annoyed, and therefore can justify that which personally annoys them as creating disorder. Hence, what is the general charge levied against any and all opponents of the admins? That they are disrupting the wiki.

The lie we are told is that the users’ mere presence is perhaps actively causing harm to the wiki, as if his presence or contribution somehow impedes another person’s ability to post. Plainly this is not the case as like our previous example, unless we dilute the meaning of harassment such that it means a passive presence, removing the directness of the word. Does an immature user contributing to the wiki stop anyone else from using it? The wiki is precisely not a zero sum game. The function of the wiki remains the same, whereby people are able to post at their own leisure. At no point does one person contributing ipse facto cause another person to be unable to post. Could we assume that the admin is perhaps so distracted by rage that they are unable to post themselves? Perhaps, but then they have no one to blame but themselves, as it is an unreasonable assertion to punish someone for inadvertently posting that which annoys someone else. Hence, “disrupting the wiki” is the most abused term in the wiki’s history, and it is wheeled out whenever an admin lacks an actual justification to explain their rage. “Disrupting the wiki” is an active fearmongering tactic to produce a public crisis. The user is not merely contributing, they are disrupting, and the admin is not merely mad, but a victim.

Have we not already established that every user has the right to simply ignore that which they do not want to see? The user may post whatever they want that does not violate the rules. By over-policing them such that now things in compliance with the rules are no longer acceptable, because they are “disruptive”, we effectively make the rules meaningless. Therefore, we must not accept the tired excuse of disruption as anything more than unsubstantiated hating of that which the hater does not understand.