[WikiEN-l] CZ fork: Tendrl

[Charles Matthews]

On 11/12/2010 17:21, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:17:36 -0500, Anthony wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Steve Bennett<stevagewp at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:15 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>> Ensure that (administrators|wardens|whatever we decide to call them) feel no qualms
>>>> about>kicking out clearly disruptive people.
>>> If it was clear to everyone who the disruptive people were, there
>>> would never be any problems. But one person's troll is another
>>> person's misunderstood genius.
>> It doesn't have to be clear to everyone, just to the people in charge.
> ...if you favor a top-down authoritarian model in which nobody
> outside a small ruling clique has any say in things.  And if any of
> the rabble object to that, just call them trolls too and kick them
> out as well.
>
Interestingly (for some of us) that authoritarian model has had a bad 
couple of years, in some senses. Or perhaps not, depending on your 
perspective.

Two or three years ago I was much more in the thick of things, and I 
remember telling a rather bemused American at dinner at the Alexandria 
Wikimania about the four political parties on enWP. With that as my 
baseline, things have shifted somewhat. ArbCom itself is "doing a Jimbo" 
- holding itself in reserve from acting more in public than it has to, 
and dealing with much mail in private. This is no bad thing in itself, 
and I of course having been there understand the reason. (Not many 
people know that I once posted to the arbwiki an analysis of incoming 
mail into 11 types - well ahead of my time there.) Leaving the field 
open for AN/I to be the main centre of overt authority, with serious 
disadvantages in some cases. Of course AN/I is not a "cabal", but an 
unchartered process and free-for-all.

What of those "parties"? Naming no names, except perhaps Dan's since he 
belongs to party D in my book, and Tony's since he at least belonged to 
party B, there were parties A and B of the (authoritarian) right, and 
parties C (my natural home, surprisingly to some), and D (extreme free 
speechers) on the (permissive) left. For a while the main conflicts were 
A with D, B with C, and A and B were at daggers drawn. In other words in 
the so-called authoritarian or pre-Obama era up to the 2008 ArbCom 
elections, the right was split. Parties A and B emerged somewhat 
battered, but basically A has rebuilt and B hasn't. Party C is going 
strong but turns out not to have any real reforming ideas. The Ds were 
always a noisy fringe not doing much but take WR way, way too seriously.

So that's everyone card marked, then. I notice that people on enWP talk 
at the top of their rhetorical voices still, making themselves 
ridiculous just for effect, in my view. Reactivity and ranting in the 
world according to AN/I, and random decisions can be taken.

I'm no longer interested in the police work, as I told David Gerard 
early in 2009. Other stuff to do.

Charles