Wikipedia

Abstract

"Wikipedia relates to the world of electronic democracy in the sense that it gives us the successful organisational mechanisms of decisionmaking processes, and involves millions of people. As such, it could be taken as an example for future projects. As we shall see, the practice of computer technology in Wikipedia has resulted in a pragmatic and unplanned construction, a decision-making process that deviates from the standard direct democracy model (one person-one vote, numerical calculation of votes), and takes rather the form of debates and consensus that, if one looks for historical examples, could be likened to the old method of the palaver or the modern techniques of some left libertarian circles. It should be emphasised that the Wikipedian practice has been built gradually through progressive user-experience."