On 25/07/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com> wrote:
No management expert will ever tell you that a group
of 1000 people
will ever get anywhere in strategy terms very fast. It is simply too
large to facilitate effective communication and quick agreement on
issues. As you say, there is a core community group missing. There is
the board and related personnel at the top (aka, OFFICE) , followed by
a small group of judges(aka, bcrats) who dont make policy so much as
rule on it, and then there are the so called "janitors" (aka, sysops).
Following the highly successful national model with Cabinet, Courts,
and Parliament, it is the parliament that is missing. Right now, and
possibly from the wiki culture, the parliament is traditionally the
whole community with anyone who wants to have a say being able to do
so. I would contend that the size of such a parliament is limited in
its ability to make effective decisions.
The current heirarchy does not place any special policy related
privileges on the sysop layer, and I am not about to say that it
should, but in ignoring the Parliament layer it is missing an
essential branch in the proven three prong, "separation of powers"
model.
Importantly, Wikipedia is not a nation state and can't be compared to
one. Our "judiciary" simply settles a few fights and determines a few
basic punishments: partial exclusion and total exclusion). Since
Wikipedia is a digital project with only hundreds of active editors,
representative democracy is not necessary. Direct democracy has thus
far served our needs well, and will continue to do so for the
foreseeable future.
Just out of interest, who are you suggesting plays the role of
executive/cabinet?
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)