Sustaining Process In Wikipedia

Overview The two processes I chose were sustaining and agonistic. These are the most interesting and important processes to me, and they also fit in well with the edits I made to my article. I can connect sustaining processes to the fact that Wikipedia edits are made less than once per minute, and agonistic processes to controversial conflicts of interest in the history of Wikipedia.

II.1. Definitions of two social process types

The first social process, sustaining, can be defined as a process that “maintains social order and reduces variance in conditions, behaviors, and knowledge over time.” I believe this process entails providing new information that keeps society intact and able to pass traditions down generation to generation. I identify

I decided that this would be a good time to see how many people were editing Wikipedia posts in English, and figured that the number would be relatively low, especially at 3 AM on a Sunday. However, people kept editing articles- at a rate of one edit per 30 seconds. While some may think that this reflects a transitionary, or change process because of the rapidly changing articles, I believe that it was a sustaining process. This is because many of the edits were not significant edits, completely revolutionizing an article. They were simply minor edits to ensure that the article was correctly displaying information from the past. This shows society’s inclination to ensure that past information can be transmitted into the future not only, not less, but greater than it was previously transmitted. The open-edit system opens Wikipedia up to society’s process of constantly making sure that tradition stays intact. For instance, if Wikipedia only allowed a certain number of edits, or closed its edits off to certain people, the frequency of edits would be dramatically decreased. I also believe that this would prevent the rapid change of articles for the purpose of upkeep and sustaining information for future reference. A Wikipedia edit is, on average, an improvement to the page, and an improvement to information readily available to the public. Therefore, rapid edits improve information available to the public about past events, which sustains

In November/December 2005, Wikipedia blocked the IP address linked to the United States House of Representatives from editing pages. This was because the IP address was attempting to edit pages related to politicians or issues in order to further their political interests. Wikipedia was faced with a multi-faceted controversy here. Banning the government from utilizing a website is a difficult, monumental decision. By doing this, Wikipedia improved the integrity of its website, since politicians were unable to manipulate pages for their own interest. However, by doing this, it also displayed mistrust of the government, which could cause potential problems for the website’s future. In the end, Wikipedia made the right choice in banning the IP, and the government disciplined the individuals responsible for the edits. The fact that Wikipedia can ban users from editing posts is a conflict mediator. However, the fact that Wikipedia did not hesitate to ban the United States Government from editing posts shows that Wikipedia values integrity when making important decisions. This value allows Wikipedia to remain a relatively credible website while maintaining its sometimes controversial user-driven