On 24/07/06, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
To be a little more constructive :-), I see the leadership vacuum too. I think there are many editors who would like to lead in one way or another, in fact many of them are on this mailing list at least partly in the hopes of exerting some influence.
I think the lack of leadership is good. It promotes community involvement and it proves to new users that they can help in a big way.
But I don't think there's a whole lot of incentive or reward for leadership, so attempts tend to be brief and unsuccessful. Even if one manages to organize several like-minded editors into a cooperative effort, the newest of newbies can still come in and disrupt, oftentimes with the support of onlookers shrieking about cabals, and the would-be leader sees his/her investment in WP come to naught. It's as if you were to get elected as prime minister, but any recent immigrant could unilaterally nullify any action you took and blacken your name in the papers - who would even bother to run for the position?
I see the equality between the old boys and the newbies as one of Wikipedia's greatest assets for the reasons I state above. It prevents anyone from becoming over-mighty and abusing their power and damaging Wikipedia. Leaders shouldn't come to the job because of the perks and benefits - they should fight for it because they truly want it and believe in the project.
WP's anarchy doesn't always work in the service of the goal of producing the free encyclopedia, but with so many anarchists ideologically committed to working against effective governance, it's hard even to discuss how the situation might be changed for the better.
A bigger priority, IMO, is making the Foundation more democratic and answerable to the community while also preventing momentary trends and fads from destroying the project (such as might occur if the Foundation were too democratic).