IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 52

community). Registered users have the option to display
such achievements on their profile.
The emphasis on within-community achievement
promotes another set of motivational values, those
related to social power. The standing within the community relies on the editor's achievements. High regard
and an almost immaculate history of interactions are
required to gain a higher rank within the community
[12] - that is, to be granted the role and rights of
administrator, bureaucrat, or checkuser. Even though
these are mostly support functions, they are in fact the
only positions of social power within the Wikipedia
community. The design of the platform (code) defines
these roles but additional roles can be designed by the
community without changing the code (e.g., the Arbitration Committee).

The choice of allowing anonymity is
so important.

While social power value is important to some,
those individuals that revel in the creation of knowledge without the recognition of others have a place as
well. If a person contributes for personal enjoyment
only or for the benefit of humanity, they can do so and
skip all the social processes connected to gaining recognition. A characteristic of such contributors is that
they may only contribute once, but their contribution is
something substantial, while those that strive to earn
acclaim contribute many times by making small additions and improving changes to existing articles [12].
Even though some of these values oppose each other
in Schwartz's theory (e.g., universalism and hedonism)
in such a huge community there is place for both, provided it is structured properly.
Both the achievement and intra-community social
power values are reinforced as driving the community
through another design choice: allowing anonymity.
While nicknames are recognizable to longstanding
community members, they are not linked (or rather -
do not have to be linked and for the most part are
not linked) to a real-life identity. For registered users,
anonymity also means that recognition gained within
the Wikipedia community is worthless outside it
(unlike in, e.g., FLOSS - Free, Libre, and Open Source Software - communities). Anonymity therefore boosts
achievement and social power for the editor, but only
within the community (not for any outside community
incentives, such as getting a better paid job). Naturally,

this limitation works the other way too - behavior perceived as socially negative does not have any repercussions outside the community. This is why the choice of
allowing anonymity (using only within-community identification) is so important. Potentially, it might spur
more actions detrimental to the community from individuals who are unconcerned with within-community
recognition and do not fear outside-community defamation. On the other hand, it might encourage contributions from individuals interested in building an
online persona separate from their offline life and gaining recognition from within the community [15].
The design choice to allow partial anonymity
(within community identification only) also has
important consequences for other values, including:
self-direction, conformity, and security. As mentioned
before, anonymity guards against repercussions from
outside the community. This may embolden vandals,
trolls, and haters, but it also gives editors courage to
experiment, to contribute novel, challenging ideas,
and to innovate. Those holding in high regard such
values as freedom, independence, curiosity, and selfdirection will flock to communities that allow nickname-only identification.
What we observe is that the Wikipedia community
also strives to promote the values of social order,
accountability for actions, and self-discipline even
though it allows its users to remain anonymous. The
community has taken advantage of a very loose implementation of interpersonal interactions. In the Media
Wiki platform that is the code basis of Wikipedia there
is no direct implementation of private messaging.
Instead, to send a message to an editor one needs to
edit their profile page in the same way as editing an
encyclopedic article.
This means that all personal communication is in
fact public. Anyone can trace any exchange between
any two members of the community, which enables full
accountability [12]. When a user applies for a higher
role (for example, that of an admin) his or her actions
and even personal communication are thoroughly scrutinized. Unaccepted behaviors (e.g., personal attacks)
are condemned and very often lead to a rejection. This
has tremendous consequences for the governance of
the community - it provides the necessary basis for
maintaining transparency that can in turn lead to members forming a collective awareness of the governance
processes within Wikipedia. While the Wikipedia community does not rely on the social order of the outside
world, it builds on the implemented code to maintain a
social order of its own.
Social order value can also be promoted through
hardcoding some procedures into the platform or
through running bots. For example, Wikipedia heavily

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER 2017

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