On 22/03/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
We have a group of friends working under "rough consensus and running code" and decision-making is highly distributed and what may appear to be lines of authority are often merely lines of respect and thoughtfulness.
--Jimbo
In my three years on Wikipedia, the latter two and a half as an Admin, I've seen this more often than not (and getting to be more so) devolve into the most vocal and participating contributors deciding things as they see fit (even if say, they see something as NPOV, it may not be). The most vocal and participating members may or may not be in the right, and where there are differences of opinion, those who are right will not necessarily be the majority (or even large/medium majority; "consensus" as that seems to be termed on Wikipedia).
Being right is not a subjective thing. As an encyclopaedia we are supposed to be in the business of truthful content.
It's a whole other world of messiness then when we aren't talking merely about Wikipedia's content, but formulating the principles and guidelines on which the content and project is created and managed.
Zoney