Sean Barrett wrote:
When people talk about Jimbo "interfering"
with what they want to do, I
immediately acquire a strong suspicion that what they want to do is not
in the best interests of Wikipedia, and it becomes difficult to assume
good faith.
I don't think that's always the case. Jimbo understandably is not a
full-time member of every community on all the various projects, so
sometimes his actions appear to be a sort of outside interference by
someone who hasn't been around to understand the entirel context. This
is of course a relatively infrequent sort of thing, but I think it's
possible both for Jimbo to be acting in good faith and for people to in
good faith think he's interfering somewhere he shouldn't be, because the
two have different views and levels of involvement in what's going on.
In this case, there is also a disagreement over whether the arbcom
should continue to be run as a benevolent dictatorship of sorts, with
Jimbo running the show and soliciting votes when it seems appropriate,
or should instead move to a more community-run model, like the one used
on the French Wikipedia, that would not have Jimbo involved at all
(which I think is what geni is advocating).
-Mark