Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It sounds to me like you're both making a similar
point: that is, there's no
reason to deny the reality that Wikipedia does have some bureaucratic
elements. In the worst case, this leads to a rather Kafkaesque situation
where people who are actually obstructed by bureaucracy being told by a
bureaucrat that "Well, as you can see from our policies, this is not a
bureaucracy." In this case it helps to have 20/20 vision about the fact that
Wikipedia is, in fact, bureaucratic, because recognizing the problem is half
of solving it.
If this is your view, then you probably would agree with a less polemical
version of what I took the OP to be saying: Wikipedia *is* bureaucratic, and
we ought to be honest about that.
Well, 1) no we aren't just a taco stand and 2) yes we do have more
than one employee, so certainly its a no-brainer that we have apsects
which can rightly be called "bureacratic." But this is quite different
from saying that "Wikipedia is bureaucratic." It is not. WP simply has
a mix of open and closed control systems that each have bureaucratic
aspects.
-Stevertigo
'Your faith was strong but you needed proof,
You saw me bathing on the roof...'