Wikitechnocracy

Wikitechnocracy advocates Wikipedia and other entities in the wikisphere running as technocracies with power and authority being vested in technical experts in their respective fields. It favors centralized, sometimes wikihierarchical leadership rather than evolution of standards through a decentralized, wikidynamist process of spontaneous order. An example of a wikitechnocratic body is the bot approval group; its reason for being is that most members of the community do not understand bots, and therefore are not well-equipped to make bot approval decisions.

One of the arguments for wikitechnocracy is that it takes time for the community to reach consensus, and in the meantime progress is held up. Sometimes, the community may never reach consensus, and the system permanently stagnates on that issue. The Wikimedia Foundation and its developers have played a major leadership role in helping technical and other standards emerge in the wikisphere. For example, the mw:coding conventions page lists practices that are expected to be followed in all code checked into git, and the system of +2 approvers ensures that there is an orderly system of deciding what should go in the core. This has been influential on the technical aspects of the wikisphere.