This is the English Wikipedia page for Scientology.
Scientology, for those of you don’t know, is a religion about being super chill and
normal.
But back in the early 2000s, when the Church of Scientology discovered that they had an
entry on Wikipedia, they got super not chill and normal about it.
They started removing any references to the fact that they had purchased the Cult Awareness
Network in 1996, rebranded it into the New Cult Awareness Network, and turned it into,
you guessed it: a cult.
Now, this revealed a bit of a problem with the way that Wikipedia normally works—since
it can be edited by anyone, you just have to hope that people are being good, or at
least, that they don’t have the energy to be bad for very long.
But Scientology was none of those things, and had managed to keep their pages whitewashed
for years.
That is, until 2009, when the Church’s shenanigans were brought to the attention of ArbCom, otherwise
known as the Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia’s court of last resort.
You see, all Wikipedians aren’t created equal—there is actually a little-known group
of fifteen that can step in to deliver a final verdict; in this case, to completely ban the
Church of Scientology from the site.
But who, exactly, is this cabal of nerds, and how do they put an end to Wikipedia’s
edit wars?
In Wikipedia’s early days, the court of last resort was this guy: Jimbo Wales, the
co-founder of Wikipedia.
But I don’t have to explain why having one random dude named Jimbo being the final say
for every dispute on the largest single reference work ever created by humans is a bad idea,
so in 2003, Jimbo founded the Arbitration Committee—the group that could keep Wikipedia
together if it ever fell into chaos.
Now, the Arbitration Committee is rarely called upon—they’ve only ever weighed in on a
few hundred cases in Wikipedia’s history, because, most of the time, disputes don’t
involve a powerful cult trying to spread dangerous propaganda, it’s usually just two nerds
bickering over whether a Half as Interesting video is a reliable source.
There’s quite a lot that has to happen before a dispute finally reaches the committee, so,
to explain how all that works, here’s Half as Interesting’s Extremely Abridged Guide
On How To Escalate a Fight on Wikipedia.
Step one: the first thing you’re supposed to do if you encounter some information on
Wikipedia that you think is wrong is to fix it, add citations, and then explain what you
did in the edit summary.
And that would work just fine, if human beings were well-meaning creatures who could be trusted
with collective responsibility over listing sexually active popes, but they’re not,
so what will probably happen is someone will eventually come along and revert or override
your edit.
You could let it go, but are you really going to cede your authority on the sexual activity
of popes?
No, of course you’re not.
This is where the dispute resolution process begins.
Step two: if someone reverts your edit, you’ll probably be tempted to just revert it back,
and then go to their house and kill them.
This is not allowed.
Technically, reverts are only supposed to be used in the event of vandalism, and Wikipedia
sticks to a pretty strict three-revert-rule, where normal users can only use three reverts
on a page in a 24 hour period.
The first part of the dispute resolution process needs to go down on the “talk” section
of any given Wikipedia page—this is basically just a forum where editors can discuss possible
edits to the page, but they often end up being longer than the page itself.
Here, for example, is a 24,000 word thread on whether Wikipedia should spell aluminum
“aluminum” or the wrong way.
And yes, before you ask, the word “Hitler” appears 17 times in this thread, proving that,
sometimes, you need to move on to the next step.
Step three: if you can’t come to a consensus on an article’s talk page, you can bring
it to one of Wikipedia’s twenty-something noticeboards.
Each of these is dedicated to a different kind of dispute, ranging from style questions,
to source reliability, to conflicts of interest.
The point of these noticeboards is to get some mediation from a neutral third party—highly-experienced
editors who volunteer as mediators—when things get too heated.
The case gets filed in this form, where the dispute is summarized, past attempts to resolve
the problem are detailed, and each side gives their argument.
In this case, naturally, the argument is over whether a tin box counts as a tin can, which
according to one editor, has “spiraled into mayhem.”
The mediator suggested using the phrase “tin container,” which really just made everyone
mad, so this dispute remains unsolved to this day.
And it’s only in cases like this—where the stakes are high and even an experienced
mediator can’t get everyone to agree—that Wikipedia’s nuclear option can be activated.
Step four: The Arbitration Committee.
So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, this is a group of 15 people who are
voted on in annual Wikipedia elections and serve 2-year terms in a role that’s sort
of like a supreme court justice if instead of deciding whether people should have rights,
they decided what a tin can was.
If you truly have nowhere else to turn, you can write a 500-word summary of your dispute
and file for arbitration.
Now, there’s a pretty good chance your case won’t be heard—the committee only tends
to only hear cases that are particularly divisive, complex, actually important, or of special
interest to Wikipedia’s extremely boring dictator, Jimbo.
Before hearing a case, the committee has to vote on whether to even hear it—if you get
4 net yes votes or a simple majority of active committee members, then it’s arbitratin’
time.
The committee will draft up a proposed decision and put it on the case page—from there,
other editors can post relevant evidence or suggest edits to the decision, and then the
committee votes on a final decision.
In this case, a user named Communicat kept editing the page for World War II with citations
from a historian named Stanley Winer, a guy with no credentials but plenty of conspiracy
theories, and also apparently a Wikipedia account named Communicat.
Because no one else on Wikipedia had the power to make this guy shut up, the Arbitration
Committee voted 13-0 to ban him from ever talking about World War II on Wikipedia again.
So there you go: in just four easy steps, 30,000 words of debate, and a trial that would
put the US judicial system to shame, you, too, can get a guy to stop being annoying
online.
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