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Revision as of 12:30, 3 October 2004
A real world power structure decides who lives and who dies, and who is allowed to enter what building or facility. It determines which property rights will be enforced, and which not. It is a very brutal nasty thing. It is not to be dealt with lightly, nor is it to be accepted without question, as that may well mean accepting its disposal of your own body at some future time.
Anyone who has done military service will realize just how serious this is.
Such people might also assume that hierarchy is the only way to organize power structures. Indeed, this is exactly what Wikipedia assumes with its English-only GodKing presiding over his vile mailing list. Also, there, the article on power structure is literally redirected to "hierarchy"!
This biased equivalence illustrates a key point: A sysop power structure on a large public wiki is usually just a petty and pathetic mirror of the power structure in the real world. For instance, those concepts favoured in the mass media or by ruling political parties, will almost certainly be strongly favoured in the distribution of sysop vandalism - less empowered views, no matter how popular, will be attacked.
This is usually becuse the power structure implies and imposes systemic bias ("who rules") and also establishes precedents for a (separate but similar) systematic bias ("how they answer to each other for their rule").
There are no real world power structures without factions granted first class status as participants. This is inevitable, as in the real world people co-operate in units or mobs or political party based on a value system and/or a compromise of that value system with the constraints of interest groups they belong to. A typical "labour party" for instance, compromises some "working class values" with some trade union special interests to get support which is based in part on the values, and in part on the interests.
A power structure is composed of many power networks that reflect such tradeoffs. These networks often evolve strictly in relation to each other, and cannot be said to exist without the opposition provided by each other's actions. That is, without "management", there would really be no "union".
