On 2/7/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote: Moral: any community run entirely on good will can be permanently damaged by a short but serious bout of ill will? Steve

Geoff Burling wrote: "Self-regulating" would be a true anarchist model whereby everyone can do anything, I think. Certainly something based on consensus. Consensus doesn't scale. I think the moral about burned-out old editors is a good one, though. We need to carefully avoid placing people on a pedestal because of their past accomplishments. If you're wrong, you're wrong. I think the solution is to expand the number of "super-trustable" users who will have real authority around Wikipedia. Right now only the arbcom has any authority, because authority is derived only from Jimbo and/or the Board. My proposal: Give the 'crats authority. Right now both 'crats and admins are theoretically equal to normal editors, only with a few more tools. I think this is the right attitude to take towards admins, because adminship should be no big deal. But bureaucratship is far from "no big deal", and I think this should be reflected in that bureaucrats should have some higher standing in the community. They should be able to step in and desysop in cases like wheel wars. They should be able to say, "Ok, that's it, let's cut the crap" -- much like the arbcom or Jimbo would/should. (This raises the problem of 'crat wheel warring, but presumably because of the huge big dealness of this, we'll only have a limited number of 'crats at any one time, anyhow.) I actually think Wikipedia is headed towards a similar fate like the site Geoff mentioned -- consensus doesn't scale when communities grow, because consensus gives people with dug-in heels the ability to stop change in its tracks or even go berserk (take the case of wheel warring -- consensus presumes admins are capable of coming to a consensus, even if there are 800+ of them). In any large number of people, you'll easily find people who will never budge on a particular issue. Unfortunately, a wiki works on consensus -- if there's no consensus, the wiki fails. (Revert warring is a case where there is no consensus, and we all know how ugly revert wars are.) One thing I see different from Geoff's case study, however, is that the founder of this wiki has stepped back but forgot to delegate power. The only people around with any authority are the arbcom, and how effective are they? They can't even intervene unless someone appeals to them or Jimbo thrusts a case on them. They don't ever step into a dispute while it's on-going and say "STFU, cut this out or we'll desysop/ban you lot," which is something Jimbo used to do (remember those naming disputes like [[Gdansk]] or the autofellatio scandal?). IMO, Jimbo needs to delegate this dispute-stopping power to someone, because Jimbo can't be putting out fires all the time. Hence, the 'crats. I know this will be controversial and unlikely to pass, but it's my honest opinion. Something has to be done. I'm fed up of all this crap going on. The 'crats don't have to rule who's wrong or right. They just have to put their foot down real hard, like Jimbo would. For instance, in the recent userbox shitfight, Jimbo/they could just have said, "Kelly and Tony must stop deleting userboxes this instant and discuss or they will be desysoped." This isn't a ruling that would have ruled them to be wrong (in that the userboxes were bad). It would just have ruled that they were wrong in wheel warring over the userboxes. The arbcom can decide on the legality of the userboxes. In a sense, this proposal would finally create three independent branches of "government" (because Wikipedia does not have a real government) -- executive, legislative and judicial. (The legislative branch is the community, of course -- anyone can create a new policy and get consensus for it.) Until now Jimbo has had to step in whenever people (especially cabal members) need to be told to cool off. He shouldn't have to. Jimbo's role is being the face of the foundation and being the last court of appeal. He has to handle all the Wikimedia projects -- he shouldn't be spending his time tackling problems on the English Wikipedia. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

Steve Bennett wrote: Or he could just give imprimatur to the elected bureaucrats. :p John Lee

On 2/7/06, Jay Converse <supermo0(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually I think the aura of the God-King has either faded for a lot of people, or they never had a sense of it in the first place (cf, Karmafist wheel warring with Jimbo). Our constitutional monarchy model has problems . Ian

I'm sure that if Tony Blair decided to turn the UK into a fascist one- party state, Queen Elizabeth would come down and say "no, stop, you're being stupid." This is a big argument for constitutional monarchies being better than republics, incidentally. -- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

This is a long established principle. Bagehot talked of three rights belonging to the monarch: "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn" She has far more experience than any current politician in the processes of government, and her advice would be valuable. But she can do no more than warn. If she dismissed the Government and selected another more to her liking, then without the support of the House of Commons, that replacement would soon run out of money. If we are talking about doing things legally, that is. If Tony Blair decided to turn the UK into a one-party fascist state using illegal means, an exciting possibility that would raise many British eyebrows, then the Queen would probably find herself unable to intervene. It would depend on which side the military decided to support, I suppose, and the [[King's Own Queens]] regiment might find itself in an impossible position. Well, more impossible. Well, I dunno. What happens if the Queen decides to turn the UK into a fascist one-party state? It's not as if it hasn't happened before. Peter (Skyring)

We had pretty much this situation in Australia in 1975. The Governor-General acted (using his own powers rather than the trifling powers of the Queen, I might add) and speedily put the decision in the hands of the people. If the people had re-elected the dismissed Government, then the Governor-General would have personally been history and as an office would inevitably have seen its powers diminished. In a republican democracy like Australia, it is right and proper that the people should have the final say. Sovereignty resides in the people rather than any one person or group. But Wikipedia isn't a republic and it isn't a democracy. Sovereignty resides in the hands of Jimbo. However, with a purely voluntary membership, that sovereignty is worth about as much as the community is willing to acknowledge, because the citizens of this community may leave if they feel uncomfortable. I think it is a measure of the success of Jimbo's administration/sovereignty/GodKingness that new citizens are flocking over the borders, rather than leaving in droves. Peter (Skyring)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Peter Mackay stated for the record: I'm having way too much fun contemplating the [[King's Own Queens]] (perhaps as portrayed by [[Monty Python]]), so please tell me what regiment you really meant. - -- Sean Barrett | She had lost the art of conversation, sean(a)epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Peter Mackay stated for the record: Oh, okay. Your "more impossible" comment, together with the [[brackets]], led me to believe it was something real. We Merkins are prepared to believe anything, no matter how silly, about the redcoats. - -- Sean Barrett | She had lost the art of conversation, sean(a)epoptic.org | but not, unfortunately, the power | of speech. --George Bernard Shaw

Perhaps admins should publicly swear an oath of allegiance to Jimbo? Pete, enjoying the prospect of the solemn twilight ceremony, the massed bands, the arena full of hushed spectators, the flags, the bunting...

I see you had a classical education, Phil! Actually, I was thinking about bunting in a baseball sort of way, and making my usual sort of silly wordplay. Regarding Wikipedia as any sort of equivalent to real-life organisations is always going to end up looking rather strained. Wikipedia is Wikipedia is Wikipedia. By definition. Peter, walking with four balls

On 2/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay(a)bigpond.com> wrote: I pledge allegiance, to the Jimbo, of the United Articles of Wikipedia. And to the cabal, for which it stands, one oligarchy, under all, indivisible, with speedy tags and vandalbots for all. (This is meant to be entirely humorous and does not reflect my views on anything.) -- Jay Converse I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.

On 2/8/06, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com> wrote: What? -- Jay Converse I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.

On 2/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote: ObHeh: Heh.

On Tue, 7 Feb 2006, Guettarda wrote: Okay, I thought this was as obvious as the sun shines in the daylight, but it appears to me a few people are taking this metaphor *way* too seriously. Jimbo is NOT a Godking. Nor a God. Nor a King. Wikipedia is NOT a monarchy. Nor a democracy. Nor any kind of government. If this is a suprise to you, then you are clearly lacking a clue. Then just what *is* Wikipedia? I am not a lawyer, but I dare say that it is a contract: two sides have entered into an agreement, each providing services for the others' benefit.[*] On one side, Jimbo has taken responsibility for providing servers, bandwidth & software to the other side, with the expectation that the other side produces an encyclopedia that meets his expectations. If that doesn't happen, then he reserves the right to (literally) pull the plug on the project, & all of us can start looking for something else to do with our time. The other side is the rest of us -- the volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia. We contribute our efforts in the expectation that -- well, I assume that we do this in hope of receiving some kind of satisfaction for our efforts. Quite simply, if one, some, most or all of us don't receive satisfaction from our contributions -- we'll leave. You may not believe this, but there are a surprising number of projects like Wikipedia out there & if Wikipedia's not to our liking, we'll go to one of these other projects & contribute to them. (And I believe in the case of a few people, they might actually be happier at one of these other projects.) Now having stated this painfully obvious situation, I'm going state a less obvious one: there are a number of good, responsible contributors in Wikipedia who fear this project is drifting into rule by fiat. In other words, they are uncomfortable with other contributors arbitrarily making changes without explanation, while they must needs justify their actions. (I don't know if there's any substance to these complaints, or this is just a number of troublemakers trying to lie their way out of trouble, but I am surprised to see a few long-term Wikipedians agree with this opinion. And it's hard to dismiss this as clueless whining when I see phrases like "process fetishisation" thrown around here by people who should know a little better.) Maybe the different sides ought to talk about this problem a bit more. Anyone here notice that we have talk pages all over the place, an email list, an IRC channel & face-to-face meetings? The only weakness with this richness of communication is that not all of us are conversant with all of these media, so don't think that asking a question on a single talk page, or IRC or one email list alone will be seen by everyone who does care. After all, all of the "evuhl proc3ss fetishizing" really boils down to getting input from your fellow editors before you make major changes; & most of the time, the input is either silence (which one can safely assume means consent), explicit consent, or some useful suggestions. And if the input is critical or useless . . . well, ignoring the dumbasses & making the change anyway is going to lead to problems anyway. Either accept that people are going to be mad, or build a consensus before you are bold. And before anyone starts placing me in one group or another in these recent disputes, let me say that for the most part I don't have a beef with anyone: I try to just contribute material, edit articles, & hope that my writing & spelling isn't too crappy. I want Wikipedia to succeed like everyone else, & when I see it mentioned in a newstory or tv program I feel a mixure of pride -- & embarassment over the faults I know it still has. As long as it's not clearly offensive, I don't care what people do with their user pages -- but I admit I could get worked up over this. I have Admin rights, but I rarely use them because I rarely need to. Like Stan Shebs commented in another thread, I learn about most of these threats that endanger Wikipedia from reading this mailling list. I just feel that declaring Jimbo the expert we should obey without question, or demonizing those who disagree with him, isn't a constructive solution. Wikis & the NPOV principle make it easy to talk with those we disagree with: so why don't we try to emphasize *that* instead of deciding to get tough on the other side? BTW, the Wikipedia article on "wheel warring" (or whatever it is called) sucks. I've read it several times, & all I've learned from it is that it has something to do with two or more people obtaining root on the same machine -- which surprises me, as this term has been thrown around an awful lot lately. Maybe someone who's experienced or seen a "wheel war" can provide a better explaination. Geoff [*] Technically, this is not exactly what a contract is -- but in the most part, what I have written applies. Since a lawyer is, by definition, an expert in technicalities & exactitude, this explanation makes it clear that I am not one.

Geoff Burling wrote: One problem, Geoff: Jimbo *is* our GodKing. At least, that's what most of us refer to him as. I agree with everything else, you said, though. :p John Lee

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, John Lee wrote: [I'm guessing John was referring to this comment; for some reason he snipped out all of my post:] ISTR that Jimbo in some email, years ago, disavowed this role in the scheme of Wikipedia. Looking thru past emails, the best I could do was to find the following post from Ed Poor (6 Feb 2004): which puts me in the odd spot of agreeing with Ed, although I suspect he might not agree with the rest of what I wrote. Although I doubt a "GodKing" would write something like the following as Jimbo had 21 jan 2003, because neither Kings nor Gods like to admit that they are sometimes conflicted over their decisions: In any case, I still think of him as the guy who can pull the plug on this whole endeavor if he believes it isn't worth further effort, so it's a good enough reason to follow his lead. Until it isn't -- but then everything I've contributed is mirrored somewhere under GFDL or CC-BY, so I've lost nothing if the experiment implodes. Geoff

On 2/7/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ok, good points, replace "appointed by" with "approved by". In other words, exactly the same procedure as for appointing ArbCom members. And not by coincidence. Steve

G'day Steve, I suspect it still wouldn't happen. Witness [[User:God of War]]'s actions on the CSD page; he's decided that Jimbo's word can't trump consensus, and "consensus" is on his side, and therefore Jimbo can't change the CSD to include particularly stupid templates. What do we do about users --- most of them newbies, most of them bound up in some way with the userbox debacle --- who think Wikipedia is a democracy, and any opposition is rogue admins gone Fascist? Standing over them and saying "Jimbo says such-and-such! Respect his authority, damnit!" probably wouldn't do much good. -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.2/253 - Release Date: 7/02/2006

On 2/8/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au> wrote: To be fair the change is completely incosistant with the general scope of CSD policy Prevent admins and Jimbo from doing silly things would be a start -- geni

On 2/8/06, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: As a general rule we are not impressed with people messing anyone about (test1 on the pages of clear vandles does not count as messing about). -- geni

John Lee wrote: A lot of the most bitter fights are over trivial matters Yes, but we really have paradoxical situations. While most of us would probably like to see a more democratic system it depends on all individuals having enough vision to look beyond their personal concerns. Appointing trusted people may in some cases be the only solution, and if you trust them when they are appointed you also need to trust them in the exercise of their duties. In those circumstances if Jimbo goes ahead and exercises his powers without consulting his appointee he undermines that person's authority. Quite often an understanding on the problem between Jimbo and the person would be within easy reach. When substantive agreement is there the appointee should be the one to put it into effect. A project leader needs to have a broad overview. He also needs a track record of at least trying to build consensus. He needs to build up a stock of good will that will often need to be used when there is need to act decisively. He will often need to confront people, and some of them will try to complain directly to Jimbo..Unless the appointee develops a track record of consistently abusing his powers, Jimbo will need to stand behind him. Even where there are multiple bureaucrats, one would probably still need to be recognized as the chief bureaucrat to avoid that situation. Ec