Metaweb:Faction

(Redirected from Faction)

A faction is a group of co-operating users who can sometimes conspire against, as opposed to always executing the instructions of, the administrators. It's roughly analogus to a political party, and puts the administrators in the position of being bureaucrats executing a due process.

Note that GetWiki and Mediawiki software themselves create several factions simply by assigning user roles, those being Metaweb:sysops, Metaweb:developers, and the Metaweb:vandals they block IP of, and Metaweb:trolls they sometimes propose formal processes or features "for".

A closely related concept is that of the phyle from Diamond Age. It may be more appropriate given the Stephensonia focus of metaweb to talk in terms of Metaweb:phyles than factions. That would let Neal say what they are, and vary from the concept of a faction as it is evolving on other wikis.

Since both the faction and the phyle are those who assume high trust within the group, but are not necessarily accorded any trust beyond absolute minimum by those outside the group, it's an alternative to a permission-based model, and one more likely to encourage the kind of wide participation a large public wiki thrives on.

See Recyclopedia:faction for a discussion of these potentials. Faction capabilities are one of several features for managing identity dispute problems, collective identity, alleged identity, an interwiki identity standard and a standard wiki URI.

See also Consumerium:faction for a discussion of how factions may apply in that model.