Comment by Kim_Bruning
4 years ago
Mergers like you mention have happened early on, and they worked.
Last I looked the decisions were not per-se arrived at by an in-group ("The Cabal"). Instead, a lot of it functions by applying smart-mob behavior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mob
Note that -at times (and/or at particularly small scales)- it can be really hard to distinguish a smart mob from a cabal, so I can see where the impression comes from.
The 'smart mob' - which is a bit of an odd name when applied to actions centred on a digital platform - can be a way for an in-group to form. Once that in-group has seized control over an interest area they'll (ab)use their power to keep out any further take-over attempts. As long as they are ideologically aligned with the majority of editors they're mostly free to police 'their' interest areas which unfortunately makes this a self-reinforcing structure.
I do know what you mean. At the time when I was still very active, the great majority of the time it really was a smart mob that got misidentified. Very rarely you did get to see an undesirable in-group forming (usually it turned out to be due to misunderstandings, mind). I even wrote a procedure on how to find (among other things) in-groups by exploiting existing natural processes, but I don't think I did a very good job of explaining at the time. (and it has since been rewritten a lot)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:BOLD,_r...
The here-relevant part of the trick was to make a change to a disputed page, and then to observe who reverts it[*]. The person or people who revert it are always going to be interesting in some way.
The new version is actually clearer sometimes, especially the general overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...
[*] A whole lot of caveats apply.