LittleDan wrote:
....
In all of the other wikis (except for the ones modeled
after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life" (as
you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
Most other wikis despise that we have one person
running the whole thing. I don't think we should keep
doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also gave
up control of it. We are a community, not governed by
one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is an
anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia will
never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
--LittleDan
This is way off base here. Jimbo has been tirelessly caring, compassionate and
fair and has been a true "benevolent dictator" in the spirit of Linus
Torvalds.
His guidance and the resources he has donated has gotten us to where we are.
Not only does he spend a good deal of his time on Wikipedia-related things
but he has also donated many tens of thousands of dollars of his own money
into the project. He didn't have to do that.
And he did this all this without the faintest hint that he expected to get
anything out of Wikipedia other than the satisfaction in knowing that he is
nurturing a project that is creating one of the best free resources on the
Internet. Trying to ensure that human knowledge is made freely available to
everyone; IMO, few things are nobler than that.
That said, I do want to say that any "dictatorial" type of system is
inherently flawed and the results are only as good as the leadership and
mediation skills of the current dictator (which can be anything between
benevolent to malevolent).
The Romans started on the tract of a dictatorial-type system back with
Augustus Caesar. Now Augustus was a great leader - just like Jimbo - but the
system he created totally depended on the strength of charactor of the
Emperor. So when a person with poor leadership skills or morals takes over in
such a system then we have Neros and Caligulas.
But in a free wiki like this it is easier to "split the empire" (sic fork) if
we have bad leadership. This threat should put some limit on how "malevolent"
a dictator can be.
So there are some checks and balances even in the system we have now. Although
this really is the ultimate check so a better system with more checks and
balances is needed.
You are young so I'm assuming your angry outbust is really directed at the
system and not the man.
We /do/ plan on changing the system as part of the process of setting up the
Wikimedia Foundation, BTW, so there is nothing to be angry about.
Save your ideas for when we start to draft Wikimedia's charter.
In the spirit of WikiLove (a Jimbo concept :),
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)