1 00:00:00,350 --> 00:00:03,370 This is the English Wikipedia page for Scientology. 2 00:00:03,370 --> 00:00:07,730 Scientology, for those of you don’t know, is a religion about being super chill and 3 00:00:07,730 --> 00:00:08,730 normal. 4 00:00:08,730 --> 00:00:12,230 But back in the early 2000s, when the Church of Scientology discovered that they had an 5 00:00:12,230 --> 00:00:15,969 entry on Wikipedia, they got super not chill and normal about it. 6 00:00:15,969 --> 00:00:19,500 They started removing any references to the fact that they had purchased the Cult Awareness 7 00:00:19,500 --> 00:00:24,789 Network in 1996, rebranded it into the New Cult Awareness Network, and turned it into, 8 00:00:24,789 --> 00:00:26,410 you guessed it: a cult. 9 00:00:26,410 --> 00:00:30,380 Now, this revealed a bit of a problem with the way that Wikipedia normally works—since 10 00:00:30,380 --> 00:00:35,280 it can be edited by anyone, you just have to hope that people are being good, or at 11 00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:38,210 least, that they don’t have the energy to be bad for very long. 12 00:00:38,210 --> 00:00:42,870 But Scientology was none of those things, and had managed to keep their pages whitewashed 13 00:00:42,870 --> 00:00:43,870 for years. 14 00:00:43,870 --> 00:00:48,780 That is, until 2009, when the Church’s shenanigans were brought to the attention of ArbCom, otherwise 15 00:00:48,780 --> 00:00:52,240 known as the Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia’s court of last resort. 16 00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:56,780 You see, all Wikipedians aren’t created equal—there is actually a little-known group 17 00:00:56,780 --> 00:01:01,980 of fifteen that can step in to deliver a final verdict; in this case, to completely ban the 18 00:01:01,980 --> 00:01:04,080 Church of Scientology from the site. 19 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:09,180 But who, exactly, is this cabal of nerds, and how do they put an end to Wikipedia’s 20 00:01:09,180 --> 00:01:10,180 edit wars? 21 00:01:10,180 --> 00:01:14,500 In Wikipedia’s early days, the court of last resort was this guy: Jimbo Wales, the 22 00:01:14,500 --> 00:01:15,880 co-founder of Wikipedia. 23 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:19,820 But I don’t have to explain why having one random dude named Jimbo being the final say 24 00:01:19,820 --> 00:01:24,180 for every dispute on the largest single reference work ever created by humans is a bad idea, 25 00:01:24,180 --> 00:01:28,800 so in 2003, Jimbo founded the Arbitration Committee—the group that could keep Wikipedia 26 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:31,210 together if it ever fell into chaos. 27 00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:35,000 Now, the Arbitration Committee is rarely called upon—they’ve only ever weighed in on a 28 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:39,390 few hundred cases in Wikipedia’s history, because, most of the time, disputes don’t 29 00:01:39,390 --> 00:01:43,500 involve a powerful cult trying to spread dangerous propaganda, it’s usually just two nerds 30 00:01:43,500 --> 00:01:46,890 bickering over whether a Half as Interesting video is a reliable source. 31 00:01:46,890 --> 00:01:51,719 There’s quite a lot that has to happen before a dispute finally reaches the committee, so, 32 00:01:51,719 --> 00:01:55,399 to explain how all that works, here’s Half as Interesting’s Extremely Abridged Guide 33 00:01:55,399 --> 00:01:58,420 On How To Escalate a Fight on Wikipedia. 34 00:01:58,420 --> 00:02:01,340 Step one: the first thing you’re supposed to do if you encounter some information on 35 00:02:01,340 --> 00:02:05,570 Wikipedia that you think is wrong is to fix it, add citations, and then explain what you 36 00:02:05,570 --> 00:02:07,250 did in the edit summary. 37 00:02:07,250 --> 00:02:11,400 And that would work just fine, if human beings were well-meaning creatures who could be trusted 38 00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:14,960 with collective responsibility over listing sexually active popes, but they’re not, 39 00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:19,319 so what will probably happen is someone will eventually come along and revert or override 40 00:02:19,319 --> 00:02:20,319 your edit. 41 00:02:20,319 --> 00:02:23,849 You could let it go, but are you really going to cede your authority on the sexual activity 42 00:02:23,849 --> 00:02:24,849 of popes? 43 00:02:24,849 --> 00:02:26,319 No, of course you’re not. 44 00:02:26,319 --> 00:02:30,170 This is where the dispute resolution process begins. 45 00:02:30,170 --> 00:02:34,120 Step two: if someone reverts your edit, you’ll probably be tempted to just revert it back, 46 00:02:34,120 --> 00:02:35,989 and then go to their house and kill them. 47 00:02:35,989 --> 00:02:37,310 This is not allowed. 48 00:02:37,310 --> 00:02:41,241 Technically, reverts are only supposed to be used in the event of vandalism, and Wikipedia 49 00:02:41,241 --> 00:02:45,620 sticks to a pretty strict three-revert-rule, where normal users can only use three reverts 50 00:02:45,620 --> 00:02:47,980 on a page in a 24 hour period. 51 00:02:47,980 --> 00:02:51,900 The first part of the dispute resolution process needs to go down on the “talk” section 52 00:02:51,900 --> 00:02:56,430 of any given Wikipedia page—this is basically just a forum where editors can discuss possible 53 00:02:56,430 --> 00:03:00,379 edits to the page, but they often end up being longer than the page itself. 54 00:03:00,379 --> 00:03:04,870 Here, for example, is a 24,000 word thread on whether Wikipedia should spell aluminum 55 00:03:04,870 --> 00:03:07,190 “aluminum” or the wrong way. 56 00:03:07,190 --> 00:03:11,640 And yes, before you ask, the word “Hitler” appears 17 times in this thread, proving that, 57 00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:14,290 sometimes, you need to move on to the next step. 58 00:03:14,290 --> 00:03:18,260 Step three: if you can’t come to a consensus on an article’s talk page, you can bring 59 00:03:18,260 --> 00:03:21,120 it to one of Wikipedia’s twenty-something noticeboards. 60 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:25,709 Each of these is dedicated to a different kind of dispute, ranging from style questions, 61 00:03:25,709 --> 00:03:28,480 to source reliability, to conflicts of interest. 62 00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:32,730 The point of these noticeboards is to get some mediation from a neutral third party—highly-experienced 63 00:03:32,730 --> 00:03:36,489 editors who volunteer as mediators—when things get too heated. 64 00:03:36,489 --> 00:03:40,370 The case gets filed in this form, where the dispute is summarized, past attempts to resolve 65 00:03:40,370 --> 00:03:43,739 the problem are detailed, and each side gives their argument. 66 00:03:43,739 --> 00:03:48,319 In this case, naturally, the argument is over whether a tin box counts as a tin can, which 67 00:03:48,319 --> 00:03:51,650 according to one editor, has “spiraled into mayhem.” 68 00:03:51,650 --> 00:03:55,800 The mediator suggested using the phrase “tin container,” which really just made everyone 69 00:03:55,800 --> 00:03:58,430 mad, so this dispute remains unsolved to this day. 70 00:03:58,430 --> 00:04:02,510 And it’s only in cases like this—where the stakes are high and even an experienced 71 00:04:02,510 --> 00:04:07,819 mediator can’t get everyone to agree—that Wikipedia’s nuclear option can be activated. 72 00:04:07,819 --> 00:04:09,980 Step four: The Arbitration Committee. 73 00:04:09,980 --> 00:04:14,000 So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, this is a group of 15 people who are 74 00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:17,940 voted on in annual Wikipedia elections and serve 2-year terms in a role that’s sort 75 00:04:17,940 --> 00:04:21,919 of like a supreme court justice if instead of deciding whether people should have rights, 76 00:04:21,919 --> 00:04:23,650 they decided what a tin can was. 77 00:04:23,650 --> 00:04:28,770 If you truly have nowhere else to turn, you can write a 500-word summary of your dispute 78 00:04:28,770 --> 00:04:29,900 and file for arbitration. 79 00:04:29,900 --> 00:04:33,800 Now, there’s a pretty good chance your case won’t be heard—the committee only tends 80 00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:37,960 to only hear cases that are particularly divisive, complex, actually important, or of special 81 00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:41,590 interest to Wikipedia’s extremely boring dictator, Jimbo. 82 00:04:41,590 --> 00:04:45,250 Before hearing a case, the committee has to vote on whether to even hear it—if you get 83 00:04:45,250 --> 00:04:50,020 4 net yes votes or a simple majority of active committee members, then it’s arbitratin’ 84 00:04:50,020 --> 00:04:51,020 time. 85 00:04:51,020 --> 00:04:54,740 The committee will draft up a proposed decision and put it on the case page—from there, 86 00:04:54,740 --> 00:04:58,169 other editors can post relevant evidence or suggest edits to the decision, and then the 87 00:04:58,169 --> 00:05:00,330 committee votes on a final decision. 88 00:05:00,330 --> 00:05:04,259 In this case, a user named Communicat kept editing the page for World War II with citations 89 00:05:04,259 --> 00:05:08,580 from a historian named Stanley Winer, a guy with no credentials but plenty of conspiracy 90 00:05:08,580 --> 00:05:12,830 theories, and also apparently a Wikipedia account named Communicat. 91 00:05:12,830 --> 00:05:16,510 Because no one else on Wikipedia had the power to make this guy shut up, the Arbitration 92 00:05:16,510 --> 00:05:21,550 Committee voted 13-0 to ban him from ever talking about World War II on Wikipedia again. 93 00:05:21,550 --> 00:05:26,520 So there you go: in just four easy steps, 30,000 words of debate, and a trial that would 94 00:05:26,520 --> 00:05:31,050 put the US judicial system to shame, you, too, can get a guy to stop being annoying 95 00:05:31,050 --> 00:05:32,050 online. 96 00:05:32,050 --> 00:05:35,780 So, given you just sat through a full six minute video about the ins and outs of settling 97 00:05:35,780 --> 00:05:40,910 encyclopedia disputes, I’m going to assume that you are a person who values knowledge. 98 00:05:40,910 --> 00:05:44,300 You 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