On 21/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
James Farrar wrote:
On 21/03/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
At English Wikipedia level, he has an informal status as a leader among the community. Historically - as a leader in the community - he exercised various functions (arbitration, for example) until those functions were delegated down (to the ArbCom, for example).
If he has delegated responsibility for them, that presumably means he retains the authority to over-rule ArbCom's decisions?
Right. I still retain the right to pardon people who are banned by the ArbCom. I have never done this, and am unlikely to do so. But I think it a valuable safety valve in case the ArbCom somehow begins to go radically against community consensus in some particular case. Unlikely.
Thanks for the response.
It seems to me that the "constitutional monarchy" model isn't totally appropriate here, as in a constitutional monarchy, the monarch has considerable power in theory but none in practice, as the use of any power to over-rule the government would immediately lead to the removal of the said powers from them and a move directly to a republic.
I like the HoL analogy.