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The Benevolent Dictator: Why Wikipedia is actually an exacting meritocracy
- Nicholas Gruen
- Feb 12
- 2 min read
What makes open-source projects work? The ‘middleware’. It’s also why social media fails without it.
The Illusion of Openness
One astoundingly successful aspect of the early internet was the rise of peer production. Who knew that a global army of volunteers was waiting in the wings to write and give away an entire encyclopaedia, or build the software that powers the web itself?
It seems miraculous. But surely, if anyone could write on Wikipedia, we would just end up with a big mess.
Actually, yes, we would.
It turns out that the miracles of peer production are built on a prior miracle. I call it the
middleware of peer production. It is hiding in plain sight, yet we often fail to see it because we are mesmerised by what we want to see. The radical openness of the internet seems so egalitarian and democratic that we become entranced by the idea of volunteers just "doing their own thing."
We assume that because they are volunteers, they can do whatever they want, right?
Well, no.
The Hidden Meritocracy
If you are vandalistic on these platforms, your vandalism is reset. You can get banned. It turns out that Wikipedia is not a chaotic free-for-all; it is one of the most perfect and exacting meritocracies ever devised.
Consider the ladder of authority on Wikipedia:
The Unknown User: If you are new to the system, you can make a minor edit. But that is it.
Autoconfirmed: Once you have made 10 helpful changes, you become "autoconfirmed," which gives you a little more authority.
Extended Confirmed: After 30 days and 500 edits, you reach the next tier.
Committee Approval: You can climb further, but only after a committee approves your promotion.
This process mirrors what happens in any functioning business. So much for the fantasy of unbridled freedom.
The Benevolent Dictator
Just like a tennis game or a moderated debate, most peer projects have a person with the final say on what is allowed. Often, the founder becomes a kind of constitutional monarch. In "geek speak," — the Benevolent Dictator for Life.
If we pay close attention, we see our rules of life working away beneath the surface. An open-source project like Wikipedia or Linux requires the actions of individuals to align with the shared purposes of others in the project.
This brings us back to our old friend: a healthy ecology of shared and private purposes. In this digital landscape, the better you are at your job, the more responsibility you are given for the shared purposes of the project.
The Missing Gatekeepers of Social Media
Understanding this hierarchy tells us something profound about the confusion, disinformation, and rage that is currently poisoning social media.
Social media is "open," but it lacks the cognitive infrastructure that makes Wikipedia work. There are no gatekeepers steering things towards better, rather than worse, conversations. We have the openness, but we lack the middleware.
That gives us a clue as to how to fix things and it’s all leading up to an even bigger question we ask in the next video. What is the middleware of democracy, and how can we build it?
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