There have been a variety of discussions on meta about Official
Positions [OP]; some of them recent. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Official_position
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions_2#Positions
This is one of the major elements of discussion at today's Board meeting.
I would like to present a somewhat contra-OP argument that the core of
WP's success has not been its exclusive delegation of responsibility
to individuals, but rather its successful empowerment of /all/ of its
users, even new ones, to jump in and do what needs to be done.
Providing Officers with unique power and authority is a two-edged
sword; it encourages those individuals to take extra responsibility,
and provides them with authority to herd other volunteers. But simply
going out and working diligently on a project provides a similar
authority, and an internal, rather than an external, sense of
responsibility.
The existence of rare, Board-sanctioned official positions in areas
where there is not already an active group of un-official Wikipedians,
can discourage the rest of the community from jumping in, and adds
heirarchy and single points of failure to what would otherwise (in the
case of a pressing event) be an open system.
I would be comfortable with the creation of special interest groups
based around the priorities of the community and the foundation,
before deciding on individuals to represent those interests. Creating
titled individuals to carve out new interest groups, as has been
suggested in the past, is certainly unwiki and probably unscalable.
--
+sj+