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Comment by jeromebaek | Hacker News Reader

I saw an article here a couple days ago that there's this one guy who's edited or authored a third of all Wikipedia articles. Sounds like a decidedly un-democratic practice, to me... Not that I'm criticizing the guy, more power to him, just pointing out that this ideal of Wikipedia as a totally democratic base of knowledge just isn't true in practice, there are a few people holding all or most of the power, just as in any institution.

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https://priceonomics.com/the-most-prolific-editor-on-wikiped...

His pace is at least an edit per minute, while he's editing, so it's not like he is writing complete articles. It's doing things like changing deadlinks or making grammar changes.

It’s precisely because it is democratic that he is able to contribute this much. Anyone can, he just happens to be #1 by a large amount.

I'd bet most of those are grammatical in nature.

It is democratic. Just that democracy does not mean the best or the ideal - it just means the majority.

Wikipedia is not democratic, and certainly not in the sense of a majority (vote). It is governed by a feudal model where there are lords and vassals, and you are the peasant.

Actually democracy is not necessarily a rule of majority, it is a system where everybody has equal access to power. There are several models how this in practice can lead to even minority deciding. Also, the majority can change ad hoc, depending on the issue being decided, it is not fixed.

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