Sean Barrett wrote:
When people talk about Jimbo "interfering" with what they want to do, I immediately acquire a strong suspicion that what they want to do is not in the best interests of Wikipedia, and it becomes difficult to assume good faith.
I don't think that's always the case. Jimbo understandably is not a full-time member of every community on all the various projects, so sometimes his actions appear to be a sort of outside interference by someone who hasn't been around to understand the entirel context. This is of course a relatively infrequent sort of thing, but I think it's possible both for Jimbo to be acting in good faith and for people to in good faith think he's interfering somewhere he shouldn't be, because the two have different views and levels of involvement in what's going on.
In this case, there is also a disagreement over whether the arbcom should continue to be run as a benevolent dictatorship of sorts, with Jimbo running the show and soliciting votes when it seems appropriate, or should instead move to a more community-run model, like the one used on the French Wikipedia, that would not have Jimbo involved at all (which I think is what geni is advocating).
-Mark