2008/6/24 Anthony wikimail@inbox.org:
On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com wrote:
On Monday 23 June 2008 08:58, Wily D wrote:
It was "royal assented" by Jimbo, but with him effectively removed from his position of arbitrary authority these days, I wonder if the community could vote to disband ArbCom.
It doesn't need to, since the Arbitrary Committee doesn't legitimately exist in the first place. It doesn't need to be disbanded; everyone just needs to start ignoring it.
If the project community consisted solely of individuals like you and me that might work, Kurt. But in practice society isn't ready for anarchy, even on the Internet. If the ArbCom is to lose its power it will need to be replaced with something else. Like it or not, Wikipedia actually makes a good case study for why anarchy doesn't work.
May I link yet again to "The Tyranny Of Structurelessness", about how hierarchies will form, and you can either account for this or have them bite you on the backside:
http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
(this time linked from the author's own site!)
- d.