On 3/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
"9.
We're not a dictatorship. " - I dispute this. Jimbo is quite
clearly, explictly, unambiguously the ultimate arch-dictator of
Wikipedia. He has never renounced this right, and occasionally
exercises it. Now, fortunately, some dictators are benevolent... :)
Jimmy has a special community role in the _English_ Wikipedia, which
is however not legally anchored in any way. The only legally anchored
authority is that of the Board of Trustees and anyone it chooses to
delegate legal powers to. Of course, it would be unwise to exercise
that authority unless absolutely necessary.
There is definitely some lingering confusion and some inconsistency
about this, partially due to Jimmy's past double role as Chair and
President of the Wikimedia Foundation (he is neither today). But
that's the present situation.
Jimbo's role is ambiguous, but it seems pretty clear that for
day-to-day purposes, he can ignore consensus-gathering, which no one
else on the project can do (without some kind of explicit Foundation
mandate, like devs/sysadmins in software/administration matters or
Danny in office matters). If he does something As Jimbo, then no one
else can undo it without getting him to agree, de facto, unless they
want to be blocked or desysopped. I think this was made pretty clear
by the pedophilia userbox thing, where people who reversed what he did
were summarily desysopped, and it took a day or two of arguing with
him to get him to undo a block that seemed to pretty clearly not have
consensus (as I recall the incident).
So it's disingenuous to say that Jimbo is not a dictator on the
English Wikipedia. It's not really accurate to call him a benevolent
dictator, because I think you're right that if the community really
wanted him to become an ordinary sysop or less he would probably
become one, but I think it's closer to the truth than saying he's not
a dictator at all.