On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Err, at the very least, on en.wiki, he's the sole member of the "founder" class.
That's just a courtesy title, as far as I know, there are no rights associated with that user group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels
This page says it enables his to grant and remove permissions. On en.wiki, Jimbo is listed as Founder, Oversight, Admin - he's also a Stewart on Meta (and Bureaucrat and Sysop) so the point's moot anyhow.
Perhaps his only remaining 'de jure' authority is to appoint or de-appoint ArbCom members.
"de jure" under what law and enforced how?
Of course, Wikipedia has no "laws", but the "WP:ArbCom" policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy notes "Remedies and enforcement actions may be appealed to, and are subject to modification by, Jimbo Wales. An exception is that if a case involves review of one of Jimbo's own administrator or steward actions, Jimbo has agreed to accept the committee's decision as final."
This page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee acknowledges that Jimbo appoints people to the ArbCom, but maybe it's "de jure" impossible for anyone to get on ArbCom, and just "de facto" that Jimbo appoints them.
As for open rebellion - not without the foundation's support. Can't just occupy the servers. ;)
We wouldn't need the foundations support, we would just need them not to object (and if they do, there's always the option to fork, but things would have to get seriously bad for us to even consider that). Jimbo has no direct power over the servers (he has a single vote in board meetings, that's it).
Er, obviously one could fork. But the control of the website et al. rests with devs & stewarts & so on. Not mere plebs
You could always run a strawpoll.
I have no desire to oust Jimbo, so I'm not going to start any polls on the matter. If anyone else does want to oust him, they are, of course, welcome to try.
Err, I didn't mean to suggest that you wanted to. Merely that if you wanted to gauge the community, it could be done. Regardless of my or your personal opinion, if the community's unhappy, a strawpoll revealing that seems worthwhile. I don't believe it is, though.
WilyD