On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:24:32 -0400, "David Goodman" dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
WP is in the peculiar situation where any one of over 1200 people can on their own initiative decide on the outcome of a deletion debate--or a DRV. The result in seriously disputed matters depends on the personal judgment of whoever steps forward
In theory, yes. In practice the pool of admins who close debates is much smaller, of course.
I know of no successful organization with a comparable size and procedure. Historical precedents are not reassuring. The Roman tribunes & consuls had similar power, but the total number never exceeded 12; even so, the Republic's history was marked by frequent civil wars. The Polish liberum veto in the sejm of approximately 400 is generally thought to have destroyed the country. And both were merely vetoes, not the promulgation of decisions.
no, that's not really a valid analogy. We have ArbCom as our sort-of-senate and communications links are so fast that anything obviously batshit will rapidly result in desysopping.
In this case, the self-selected admin pronounced: "A COMPLEX MERGE. I think I've arrived at a solution." -- self-admittedly his own solution, not the consensus of the dispute seen rightly or wrongly--this specific merge had not been mentioned in the discussion--and there were only 2 or 3 voices supporting any merge at all. .
A solution which had previously been mooted by others and was based on other recent actions such as merging of "biographies" into articles on conjoined twins and other concepts.
But so what if it was a bold idea? We are supposed to prize boldness and creative solutions.
Deletion policy lets closers disregard particular arguments "not made in good faith," and to "use their best judgement...to determine when a rough consensus has been reached." I don't think either statement covers this case. I'm too new an admin & editor to feel comfortable proposing a desysop--and it might not be fair, because there were other recent arbitrary single-handed actions taken by individual initiative.
Yup. And yet it kind of works.
Apparently bumblebees can't fly, either.
Guy (JzG)