On 21/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
We wondered: gee, what can we do, who else would have the symbolic authority to wade in and finally ban a difficult user? And we came up with a community institution to handle it: the ArbCom. And there was fear about this: I had proven myself to be basically non-insane with banning policy (though of course not everyone agreed with everything, but I don't think anyone seriously thought I was a total tyrant nor a troll coddler)... but would an ArbCom go out of control? Over time we have slowly built the ArbCom into a viable institution that works reasonably well.
Speaking from the inside (as a former arbitrator and still being on the list to kibitz), it helps that the AC has a lot of experienced people who are *very far* from agreeing with each other on everything. It's a bit like looking into a sausage factory at times. But everyone respects each other and the results mostly work.
But, you know, institutionalization really really sucks in some major ways. So we like to keep it lightweight and as free from rules lawyering as possible. So we need to experiment and have the ability to turn back from experiments that went wrong.
This is why Wikipedia not working on precedent is important.
My daughter said something fun to me the other night. We were playing and she said in a voice of quiet power: "I will conquer your world." Me: "Hmm?" Her: "Wikipedia. I will conquer Wikipedia and you will make me the new founder of Wikipedia." Well, she's 6 years old, but maybe we could have a hereditary constitutional monarch. (This is just me joking around, please no panic. But be nice to Kira if you ever meet her. ha ha.)
Make sure she reads [[Charles I]] ;-p
Yes. Absolutely. We have no other mechanism right now to say when something is or is not law. Of course, England has the same thing. The Queen has to approve each law. The monarch has done so without exception since, well, I don't know right now, but you could look it up in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Assent
A constitution may help with this - the set of policies on policies. That's how I think of NPOV, NOR, V (or the new role of ATT) and NPA, AGF and arguably BITE - new rules that contradict those rules are probably a really bad idea.
Therefore, with respect to the situation yesterday, there has only be a slight editorial change.
Everything should keep working much the same without outrageous surprise.
- d.