On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 3:15 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: Wikipedia has no "management style" because there are no managers. We should not be a bureaucracy in any sense of the word. That is the point of WP:BURO. It's not that "We are a bureaucracy, but if you cut some corners we'll look the other way." That's not what it says at all. It says "We are NOT a bureaucracy" and so "Knowing where to go" should be much, MUCH less than half the "battle" of contributing to Wikipedia. - causa sui

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: That's the point made in the OP. Apoc2400 thinks that, since the reality is that Wikipedia has become greatly bureaucratized (he and I think that's a bad thing, you think it's a good thing, but that's beside the point) then we should stop kidding ourselves and get rid of WP:BURO. I want WP:BURO to stay because I want to have strong resistance to instruction creep and any complications of the editing process that make content contribution more and not less difficult for new users. - causa sui

Ryan Delaney &lt;ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If you are right, that would mean that 1) Jimbo, 2) a Foundation that implements and prioritizes all new development, 3) a Board that does... something, 4) an Arbcom that tries hard (to tar and feather only the right people), 5) OFFICE, 5) and 6) a small army of <s>dorks</s> administrators (empowered, apparently to make un-reviewable 2-week blocks)... 'do not necessarily qualify as "managers."' On that basis its just simple logic that 'WP does not have' a '"management style"' and 'WP is not a "bureaucracy"'. But we see cases all the time, though, where an entity says it is not something that it is, or is something that its not - North Korea for example. And that's to say nothing of the fact that *any entity that has *some notion of 'getting things done' likewise has some notion of 'managing things,' and thus has some certain concepts of "management." Hence anything with 'some concept of management' will likewise have a "management style." This is true regardless of how how chic (geek variation) it is to just say something 'there is no management style (there is only wiki).' (Note: The geekword "wiki" does not suffice in describing the Wikipedia's actual purpose, scope, or processes, let alone its systems). So while WP may not have any "managers," nor does it implement a "management style," it still has elements that at least very very strongly resemble each, though perhaps badly. And of course even a taco stand with one employee can develop some kind of "bureaucracy" issues, so I don't see the point in continuing any pretense that suggests otherwise here. In fact, according to the traditional "canonical" terminology, Wikipedia doesn't even have "editors" - it only has "users." -Stevertigo

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: It sounds to me like you're both making a similar point: that is, there's no reason to deny the reality that Wikipedia does have some bureaucratic elements. In the worst case, this leads to a rather Kafkaesque situation where people who are actually obstructed by bureaucracy being told by a bureaucrat that "Well, as you can see from our policies, this is not a bureaucracy." In this case it helps to have 20/20 vision about the fact that Wikipedia is, in fact, bureaucratic, because recognizing the problem is half of solving it. If this is your view, then you probably would agree with a less polemical version of what I took the OP to be saying: Wikipedia *is* bureaucratic, and we ought to be honest about that. - causa sui

Ryan Delaney &lt;ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, 1) no we aren't just a taco stand and 2) yes we do have more than one employee, so certainly its a no-brainer that we have apsects which can rightly be called "bureacratic." But this is quite different from saying that "Wikipedia is bureaucratic." It is not. WP simply has a mix of open and closed control systems that each have bureaucratic aspects. -Stevertigo 'Your faith was strong but you needed proof, You saw me bathing on the roof...'