procedures, Wikipedia’s policies enable conflict resolution to be handled by participants themselves. This is an example of how order arises endogenously online (Lerner and Lomi, 2020). During the first few years after its creation the reliability and rigor of Wikipedia was indeed a matter of debate (Wedemeyer et al., 2008; Giles, 2005) and a certain skepticism continues to this day. However, the literature has begun to recognize the quality of certain, more established versions such as the English and the German Wikipedias (Hube, 2017).

2.1.1. Structure and workings of Wikipedia

Despite the decentralization we have alluded to, every version of Wikipedia attempts to maintain a similar system of organization, one that is as well suited as possible to the online encyclopedia’s original idiosyncratic style, prioritizing constant improvement of entries and always preserving the principle of free participation in the collaborative construction of knowledge. In order to analyze the (im)politeness strategies (see section 4.2) that appear in the discussions concerning Wikipedia articles it is appropriate to look first at the different roles adopted by the people who edit Wikipedia content, according to their experience and knowledge of its environment. In general terms the following categories can be identified:

A) Editors are users who generate content. Their intervention is either identified –by a username or nickname– or anonymous –they can only be recognized by their IP address.

B) If a user has made a specific number of editions and has held an account for a particular length of time, they become what is known as an autoconfirmed user –an option not available as an IP editor– which allows them to edit protected articles, that is, those which, having been the focus of repeated “vandalism”, can only be edited by more advanced users. The requirements for becoming an autoconfirmed users vary according to Wikipedia language version: for example, in Spanish more than 50 edits are required and their account must be at least 4 days old (Autoconfirmados, 2020).

C) Administrators are a category whose rank allows them to engage in high level administration and control tasks. In Spanish Wikipedia, as explained by Patricio Lorente (2020:82), there are 70 active administrators across the world, which not very many considering the number of active editors in Spanish. Administrators often intervene to defuse conflict, resolve problems that are beyond the capabilities of editors and, above all, they undertake tasks that other users do not have the permissions for such as page deletion or protection. If an article has been repeatedly “vandalized” –subject to editing that is either malicious or repeatedly violates editing rules– it can be protected and certain editors can be blocked if they behave in ways that are contrary to the interests of the community.

The wiki interface enables the contributions of all user categories to be seen. This facilitates traceability, that is, tracking the changes involved in a page’s construction. Both readers and editors of Wikipedia can access all this information in the revision history: how articles were constructed, who participated in various tasks and the pageview statistics.

They can also look at the contents edited by each user (user contributions) or the discussion processes that occurred to achieve consensus on page content (user talk).

It is important to highlight that Wikipedia possesses an internal structure that, while not widely known, is available for investigation by any curious internaut: