Slim Virgin wrote:
On 4/19/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Administrators are not appointed delegates of the Foundation, and they do not receive any orders.
Anthere, a Board member has just overturned a consensus admin decision to keep Daniel Brandt blocked and has given an order not to re-block him. It wasn't couched in terms of an instruction, but that is the effect of it, otherwise he would have been reblocked immediately.
I agree. This certainly had an effect. But I nevertheless repeat. Administrators are not appointed delegates of the Foundation (ie, the Foundation does not appoint them. The community does). Admins do not receive orders from the Foundation either. They may receive requests, and they may choose to comply with these requests (which is great :-)). But they do not receive orders in their daily activity of deleting pages, protecting pages, blocking editors, unblocking editors.
A board member has given an order. This is A board member. Only ONE board member amongst others. And the words of ONE board member are not the words of the Foundation, even though the press or many english wikipedians choose to believe so. Actually, there is only one board member whose words may be the Foundation voice, it is me. Not Jimbo.
The Foundation is a LEGAL entity, governed by a board of 7 people. These 7 people work together and make decisions together. The outcome is a Foundation decision. But if ONE board member makes a decision alone, then it is just THIS board member decision. There is no way it should be considered a board decision.
I totally understand that you feel a board member has just overturned a consensus admin decision. But that overturn happened not because Jimbo is on the board, but because Jimbo is our SpecialGuy(tm). Call him leader, benevolent dictator, godking, fearless foundator, as you wish. This is in THIS capacity that he is able to overturn decisions. And the power of doing so does not come from being on the Foundation, but from being our SpecialGuy(tm), to which the community chooses to give a certain authority.
I am pretty sure that if tomorrow, Jimbo quit the board, he will still have this authority. Don't you think ?
This is just one example of how these unilateral actions create difficulties for everyone -- legal difficulties for the Foundation's position that it is not a publisher, and difficulties for the rest of us in terms of community relations.
I agree. There are benefits to this situation though, and there are some drawbacks. It is not all black and white :-(
ant
Sarah
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