The Boy Who Could Change the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    There was another group attending, however: the people holding up the platform on which this whole community stands. I spent the first few days with the mostly volunteer crew of hackers who keep the websites up and running. In later days, I talked to the site administrators who exercise the power that the software gives them. And Iheard much about the Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit that controls and runs the sites.
    Much to my surprise, this second group was almost the opposite of the first. With a few notable exceptions, when they were offstage they talked gossip and details: how do we make the code stop doing this, how do we get people to stop complaining about that, how can we get this other group to like us more. Larger goals or grander visions didn’t come up in their private conversations; instead they seemed absorbed by the issues of the present.
    Of course, they have plenty to be absorbed by. Since January, Wikipedia’s traffic has more than doubled and this group is beginning to strain under the load. At the technical level, the software development and server systems are both managed by just one person, Brion Vibber, who appears to have his hands more than full just keeping everything running. The entire system has been cobbled together as the site has grown, a messy mix of different kinds of computers and code, and keeping it all running sounds like a daily nightmare. As a result, actual software development goes rather slowly, which cannot help but affect the development of the larger project.
    The small coterie of site administrators, meanwhile, are busy dealing with the ever-increasing stream of complaints from the public. The recent Seigenthaler affair, in which the founding editor of USA Today noisily attacked Wikipedia for containing a grievous error in its article on him, has made people very cautious about how Wikipedia treats living people. (Although to judge just from the traffic numbers , one might think more such affairs might be a good idea . . . One administrator told me how he spends his time scrubbing Wikipedia clean of unflattering facts about people who call the head office to complain.
    Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation Board seems to have devolved into inaction and infighting. Just four people have been actually hired by the Foundation, and even they seem unsure of their role in a largely volunteer community. Little about this group—which, quite literally, controls Wikipedia—is known by the public. Even when they were talking to dedicated Wikipedians at the conference, they put a public face on things, saying little more than “Don’t you folks worry, we’ll straighten everything out.”
    The plain fact is that Wikipedia’s gotten too big to be run by just a couple of people. One way or another, it’s going to have to become an organization; the question is what kind. Organizational structures are far from neutral: whose input gets included decides what actions get taken, the positions that get filled decide what things get focused on, the vision at the top sets the path that will be followed.
    I worry that Wikipedia, as we know it, might not last. That its feisty democracy might ossify into staid bureaucracy, that its innovation might stagnate into conservatism, that its growth might slow to stasis. Were such things to happen, I know I could not just stand by and watch the tragedy. Wikipedia is just too important—both as a resource and as a model—to see fail.
    That is why, after much consideration, I’ve decided to run for a seat on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Board. I’ve been a fairly dedicated Wikipedian since 2003, adding and editing pages whenever I came across them. I’ve gone to a handful of Wikipedia meetups and even got my photo on the front page of the Boston Globe as an example Wikipedian. But I’ve never gotten particularly involved in Wikipedia politics—I’m not an administrator, I