On 11 Mar 2006 at 15:17, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:

The Cunctator wrote:

...

There seems to be a needlessly aggressive posture from the front office, etc. on this issue, which I'm sure is due only to the pressures of the situation. Let me state for the reecord that I, with I'm sure essentially everyone else in this thread, is here to help. We can't help the Foundation, Danny, etc. if we're not told what's going on.

Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"? Can you tell me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're not being told what's going on?

I think this sort of "feel" is coming from the sum total of various postings to talk pages involved in such actions... and I don't even know if any of the comments are actually from people speaking on the Foundation's behalf as opposed to outside commentators, but you see things like:

What happened is there was an issue that the m:Wikimedia Foundation needs to handle... The details on what happened will probably not be released publically... I cannot comment on the nature of it... We must trust that the people at the WikiMedia Foundation know what they're doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29

For some people, this perhaps brings to mind the situations they face with regard to other companies and organizations out in the "real world"... their employers, for instance. Most workplaces are probably organized in a manner in which there is a "cabal" of "bigwigs" in charge, and from time to time they retreat into closed- door meetings about which it's "none of your business" what they say or do there if you're a mere peon employee; but they just might emerge from the meeting having made a management decision to lay off your entire department.

And maybe there are very good reasons why things work that way, but people get peeved at having to deal with that sort of thing anyway, and hope for a retreat into something more congenial, run in a more cooperative way; that's what Wikipedia probably is for many, and that's why there's such a critical reaction to the (so far rare) instances where things *are* imposed by management fiat.

And I apologize if anything I said implied I didn't trust you, or that I thought you had somehow "sold out" (or were likely to do so in the near future). I do trust you. It's just that personal trust in an idealistic founder is most likely not a good permanent foundation for an institution that's expected to endure. I believe you hope and expect Wikipedia to exist in some form over 100 years from now (as an actual live, active thing, not just a fossilized static dump, though such dumps will undoubtably be of interest to future historians researching the culture of the early 21st century). This requires having a structure that can outlive its founder without becoming corrupt and self-serving, a very difficult thing to achieve; look at the history of the International Olympic Committee for one such "bad example".

As it's been said, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"; also, "with great power comes great responsibility." Such is the philosophy one can learn from comic books... :-) The sort of power where a central "office" can make arbitrary, unexplained changes and lock them down without regard to community consensus, while it's absolutely needed in certain situations (legal liabilities, etc.) is also capable of enormous potential of abuse; if the position of making and enforcing such decrees ever falls into the hands of somebody who's just a power freak who enjoys imposing things on people for no good reason, such powers would be greatly enjoyable to that person at the expense of everybody else. "Governments like emergency powers; that's why they create emergencies!"

You're doing a great job, and you really haven't directly intervened very often. People are just seeing a possibly disturbing trend in that, as Wikipedia gets more visible, the necessity of such intervention has been a more frequent thing that it used to be (even if still very rare).