Wiki Governance Practices
Wiki Governance Practices of the Consumerium Governance Organization will hopefully be best practices of very successful wiki management. Some signs of such success include:
- No GodKing.
- An independent board to supervise renaming and refactoring issues that are very contentious. Consider people from m:The ideal Wikipedia board (which will never be recruited now that "Wikimedia" exists, so their loss is our gain).
- A sysop power structure which has a reputation for due process and for treating every faction in a political dispute equally; Even if a wiki does not claim to be "neutral" it will still have to moderate community point of view or let groupthink take over:
- Outreach to groups affected by its work, and equity measures: The tendency of groups to believe they are right is strong, and the wiki must deal with large (maybe poorer) groups that have fewer representatives in the wiki, and small (maybe richer) groups with many representatives. Having access to some technology or literacy or skill should not favour a group here. That may mean specific disadvantages must apply to those with sysop powers or even fast typists. Else they can use these powers to overwhelm others' views.
Of course, if trolls are fast typists, so much the better, as they can counter the community point of view even if they are very greatly outnumbered. Hurray for trolls!
- Troll-friendly practices that don't let good contributors be driven off by trolls but do let bad sysops be so driven off (the only way to get rid of them, apparently, there seem to be no wikis where any large percentage of sysops ever loses their sysop powers, just keep them forever and ruin the wiki - there are theories of wiki-evolution about this!)
- High integrity content which is widely cited and quoted by journalists and politicians. To achieve this, a good wiki must champion content over community.