On 10/27/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
After a one month period, on December 9th, we will re-evaluate this decision using previously established methods [...]
Who is "we"? The Gregory Maxwell committee? Obviously it wasn't a Board decision, if Florence knows nothing about it. And if it was an executive decision, why isn't it being announced by Sue, or one of the staff?
Ha.
The complete series of events that caused me to write the email are slightly complex and offtopic for this thread. Oldak Quill has found the most effective short explanation: We means 'we the project'. The message was written as an assertion because I felt it was reasonably justified and expected that to be the simplest and most effective approach. My decision to take some leadership on this is partially a result of my own guilt in prolonging the current situation, and partially the result of no one else bothering to do it.
The longer story is:
I met with Sue, Mike Godwin, and Kat for a friendly "people are in town" meeting a few hours before sending the message.
During the meeting someone (i.e. not me, I believe) brought up anonymous page creation and there was a general discussion about why it hadn't been undone yet. Mike suggested that the board write a resolution making it so, Kat responded that in her opinion she didn't think the board should decide over it since it was an enwiki decision and not originally a board decision. Originally Anonymous page creation was originally presented as Jimmy's sole initiative.
I pointed out that Jimmy had said that we should change back on several occasions, spanning all the way back to Wikimania Boston. Jimmy has also publicly stated "And preventing anons from creating new pages was an example of a restriction that, as far as I am aware, has not been particularly successful."
Our meeting moved on to other topics without finding a good path to bring this matter to conclusion.
There also seemed to be a concern that the community would oppose making the change, but that was not a concern I shared in this instance. This seemed to be to be one of those issues where everyone thinks everyone else will complain but almost no one actually does.
When I got back my office I did some research, saw that the two prior public discussions were nearly unanimous on the subject of turning it back off and, in fact, I'd played a non-trivial role in disrupting an effort to do so.
As such I decided to step up to move this forward. If the community didn't like it they could blame me... I made sure that they would be reasonably well informed and have a chance to comment, unlike some other unfortunate recent decisions.
I didn't propose it as "lets have a debate over" partially because we've already had public discussions (Sept 2006), and mostly because without more information there is nothing more to debate:
"It will break things", "No it won't", "anons create bad pages", "people who create bad pages seem to log in just fine" "there will be more" "no there wont" ... Right now, neither side in a debate site any strong facts to make their argument.
Why invite an unproductive discussion unless one is needed? Besides "the unilateral statement of fact" approach is a time honored tradition of successful enwp policy revision, and I think this one isn't even half as unilateral as many decisions.
...Especially considering that this was originally stated to be "an experiment", that it was pushed out without community consensus and amid some community opposition, and that its original proponent no longer supports it.
I selected dates that would avoid other changes which would disrupt data gathering and which gave enough time to hold any pre-change discussion. Other dates would have worked equally well, and in the absence of other factors having a decision is better than not.
Had I been looking to perform this as an act of authority from above I would have flipped to my @wikimedia.org address.
When I checked with Mike he indicated that he wouldn't see a problem with me publicly positioning this as a direct result of our meeting, ... and I admit that doing so now would be a fun response to Tim and Erik's somewhat sharply pointed messages, but ultimately I don't think thats the best approach.
I did get a private query along the lines of "where did this decision come from", which I responded to which a longer explanation. The person who asked seemed happy with my response. I also responded privately to Anthere's message as soon as it went out. Hopefully everyone elses curiosity on this point will be satisfied.
I can't help but feel a little depressed about the control battles that go on around here ... but I am happy that the discussion on this subject has been reasonable.
Cheers