2008/4/24 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: Forgive me - is this some kind of English phrased in a way many editors would not understand? or am I think/stupid? *Wikipedia's traditional governance model has failed to scale adequately with the project's growth, and has become incapable of operating effectively in a project orders of magnitude larger than it was at the time the model was adopted.* *Internally-motivated policy formation has effectively stagnated. The last major changes to the main body of policy--the BLP policy and the non-free content policy--were both essentially imposed from the outside, due to external pressure on the project. Major internally-driven policy proposals, such as the attribution policy, have failed to result in anything but the predictable "no consensus" outcome.* *This is, in some sense, inevitable in a project with a perpetually open set of individuals available to participate. Policy debate becomes, in most cases, nothing more than an endurance contest between those who wish to effect some change and those who wish to retain the status quo; and, so long as those opposed to any proposal are sufficiently dedicated and sufficiently vocal, they can keep the debate going without any effective means being available to force a decision. The few attempts to do so by means of a general referendum have proven ineffective.*

2008/4/24 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>: I neither see it as "high level" English nor academic English. It certainly isn't the kind of English that should be used on any space in Wikipedia. It presumes an understanding of a legal system and If I am very wrong (a) the phrasing is incorrect and (b) Wikipedia has never set itself out to be conditioned by (i) democracy (ii)wiki-law and wiki-lawers. dunno it all seems wrong mike

Ah, you mean why isn't it in *plain* English? It would be about twice as long if it was, for a start. I expect most people interested in wikipolitics on enwiki can understand it - those that don't can always ask for clarification.

To continue the analysis of the proposal,... "The body would be given essentially unlimited authority to set project policy, so long as it is in compliance with Wikimedia Foundation policies and resolutions, the relevant laws, and so forth." To my mind this is essentially unrealistic, given the GFDL or whatever later licence we migrate to; though of course "and so forth." covers a lot of ground. In fact it covers enough ground to plausibly constitute an [[Overwhelming exception]]. "Essentially unlimited" but in practise in the real world limited in an endless variety of ways and manners. For those who don't know what an overwhelming exception is, it is a logical fallacy of the type (swiping an example from the article I refer to above): '"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" (The attempted implication (fallaciously false in this case) is that the Romans did nothing for us). This is a quotation from Monty Python's Life of Brian.' -- -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]