Kernigh wrote:
Cormac Lawler wrote:
As far as I see it: the community has control over the content, and the board bears the legal liability for the content. Jimbo's unique part in this is that he retains the power to dictate policy where he deems necessary, and when he thinks a project has veered off course significantly from its goals or the goals of the foundation. I'm not sure of what other times he has exercised this power, apart from the recent debate about the content of Wikibooks - maybe someone else, perhaps Jimbo himself, can clarify this.
Excuse me, can you clarify?
How does [[User:Jimbo Wales]] "retain the power to dictate policy"? Retention requires that you already have the power. When did [[User:Jimbo Wales]] obtain the power to dictate policy "where he deems necessary"?
I understand that someone in the Wikimedia Foundation can dictate policy in exceptional cases where that is required, but I do not understand how the Wikimedia Foundation is organised.
-- [[User:Kernigh]] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Kernigh
The power that Jimbo possessed was the power of the switch on the server. If the community was simply getting out of hand, he could have simply pulled the plug and stopped whatever was happening right then and there. It was also the "golden rule", where he who has the gold makes the rules. I know this sounds harsh, but is pretty much the real power of Jimbo in the beginning. That and the fact that he was co-founder of Wikipedia and garnered a bunch of support, where regardless of what he thought there would also be huge numbers of supporters to agree with whatever actions he has made.
One of the problems with the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation is that Jimbo's power has been tempered quite a bit. This is good in the sense that he is no longer the absolute god over Wikimedia projects, and instead has to answer to not only the WMF board, but also to the state of Florida and the IRS in terms of proper conduct for a non-profit corporation. Still, by being chairman of the board, and his co-founder status means that his opinion on many matters carries a substantial amount of weight and a good number of people still listen to him. And he only has to convince two other board members to agree with him to make it fully legal as an action of the WMF. In theory, he doesn't even need the agreement of the elected members of the WMF board.
The problem here is that a number of users on Wikibooks now seem to feel that a "Jimbo says..." edict is more than sufficient justification to perform certain actions, even though it is not necessarily something the rest of the Wikibooks community has agreed to, or even digested to see if it is something worth while. Any users that say "Whoa! Wait one minute! I think this is happening too fast and I don't necessarily agree!" are dismissed and belittled, and ignored. The only thing to do at that point is to get into a wheel war of policy decisions. That is not a good thing, and by itself is likely to get the WMF board to get involved formally. Or that people have to give up and leave. This is not good for Wikibooks either.
For some of the specific policy issues that are facing Wikibooks, some of them are legitimate issues that have needed to be addressed. Others are from a bunch of people yelling at Jimbo to come in and resolve the issue because they are making it an issue on his talk page or direct e-mails to Jimbo rather than trying to gain a concensus on the Staff Lounge or other Wikibooks forums. Of these individuals, I have especial contempt as a compromise is always a more reasonable solution, as should engagement with the community. Only if there is a genuine deadlock should outside intervention even be considered, and I think legitimate arbitrators could still be found to help out besides appealing directly to the top of the WMF.
I don't mind Jimbo coming in and weighing in his opinion on these issues either, as if he were another normal Wikibooks user. Indeed I welcome that, and want to encourage his input. The problem is when he starts changing policy pages without even a discussion, and acting as if it was always written that way doesn't sit well with me. And I chewed out Jimbo personnally when he tried to delete a Wikibook when all he did was delete the front page, and left the rest of the sub-pages in place. That just leaves garbage floating around Wikibooks that admins have to deal with later. I can understand if he feels a book is far too offensive, but I have little doubt as well that if Jimbo simply added a VfD to a Wikibook, it would likely disappear anyway. Every Wikibook that has gone to a VfD so far with disapproval by Jimbo has been deleted. I can't say the same thing about any other admin on Wikibooks.