[WikiEN-l] Community Ombuds Department

[David Gerard]

On 14/03/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> At the moment, I agree. There have been various scandals involving
>  Jimbo lately, but I don't think many Wikipedians believe a word of it
>  (I certainly don't), so I doubt many people would see much point in
>  removing him from power. It is possible that things will change in
>  time - already Jimbo's opinion doesn't always match community
>  consensus, and as consensus changes (or Jimbo's opinion changes), that
>  gap may widen to the point where people don't consider it appropriate
>  for him to have such power.


His frequently-stated plan is to slowly divest himself of special
powers on en:wp, basically because (a) Jimbo doesn't scale (b) there
are other things for him to be getting on with. But the
public-relations role of a royalty-style figurehead are in practice
still very useful to us, and are part of the work under (b) (e.g. an
obvious contact for BLP issues - although these are then handed to the
same community members who answer info at wikimedia.org, hence stressing
that emailing that address is every bit as effective).

That is, a British-style revolution, happening in a slow and orderly
manner over a length of time. Although Charles I's reign ended
somewhat abruptly, the changes in power since Charles II would be the
sort of things that would happen in a revolution - the British royal
family's job now being not the direct exercise of power, but mostly
public relations and tourism, with the ear of the government of the
day. I expect it will take Wikipedia less than 300 years to effect
this, of course ;-)


- d.