Association of Anarchist Wikipedians

Goals

Remove all positions of rational-legal authority across Wikipedia (i.e. sysops, bureaucrats, godkings).
Remove protection functionality
Eliminate any and all official policies, including those involving the use of copyrighted text and media.
Grant all users developer status, the ability to delete articles, and the ability to restore deleted articles.
Grant all users shell access (including superuser privileges) and physical access to the Wikipedia servers.
Fight the power!!!!

Members

Please see Association of Anarchist Wikipedians/Members. Feel free to add yourself.

How to achieve the goals

Removing positions of legal authority

IMO, the practical route to this goal is to obviate the legitimate uses for admins, which do currently exist. For example, only admins can be allowed to delete pages, because it's an arduous process (even for other admins) to undelete them, as well as difficult (even for admins) to notice that a deletion has even occurred. But if deletions were as noticeable and reversible as other edits, then they would be no more disruptive than a significant rewrite or (for a more exact analogy) deleting a significant section from a long article. Of course, this is just one example, so things really break down into the various other goals below.

Ending banning

Back in the day (like 2002), banning was extremely rare, and hotly contested (by the entire community) in every instance. It was quite reasonable to argue that banning was unnecessary, because the good users vastly outnumbered the vandals --and so we did. As Wikimedia has grown, this is still true; but formal decision procedures and the 3RR have pushed out the power of numbers. How can we restore this ethic?

Removing protection functionality

For the most part, protection is pointless if there are no edit wars. Are edit wars an excess of being bold --or a deficit, on the part of the bystanders? Just as ordinary users outnumber vandals, so neutral users outnumber the impassioned (on any given topic). But how can we change the culture to give them permission to act?

Eliminating policies on copyright

For practical reasons, this can't happen in the current global legal climate --at least not until Wikimedia is as decentralised as BitTorrent. (But see "Granting access to the servers" below.)

Extending deletion and undeletion to all users

Some wikis (purportedly) have no deletion per se, only blanking. A link to a blank article shows up as if the article does not exist (red for us, under default settings); however, the article history endures, making undeletion as easy as any other reversion. This simple change in the software, however, would probably lead to edit wars (over inclusion of unverifiable pet topics, say); how can we avoid this?

Granting access to the servers

In the long term, Wikimedia probably can't scale if all edits are piped through central servers. Wikimedia must be decentralised, but I have no idea how to manage this in the real world. Probably we will have to wait for developments in the technology of decentralised collaboration from the realm of computer programming, where version control is much easier to understand.

Jokes

Actually... quite great if WP were like this... Anonymous TALK 09:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to nominate myself for the general secretary of this assoiciation. Barring any objections, I will declare myself supreme dictator. BrokenSegue 22:07, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I vote against hierarchy, and therefore against having any general secretary. Furthermore I vote against any right to vote. Sarge Baldy 00:37, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Us anarchists must stick together in nocohesive ways. BrokenSegue 02:13, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This whole article doesn't make sense. Thus, in the midst of this anarchy, I proclaim myself Supreme Emperor Doctor General Dude. 24.33.244.93 04:47, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I support BrokenSegue, and I'm not even an Anarchist! You people will fall apart! User:Kinneyboy90

Fuck You ALL... I'm in charge here, and I don;t even know how to operate the damn mechanisms. Mark Marion... Fledgeling Wikanarchist.

I second that motion. But there is much I can teach you of the arts of Wiki. For example:

All discussion is now closed. Social hierarchy is not appropriate for this association.

I vote against having a right to vote. All the XfD processes and others based on voting were invented by godkings and admins which are really trolls and vandals. ;-P Protactinium-231 08:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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