On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: [snip] This is absolutely no different than any of the several other incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people. (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves, but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them) Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects. So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them, especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white after the fact. Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent thing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete indifference) of the involved community. Activity requirements were imposed on stewardship, and Jimmy only used the technical permissions on enwp (due to traditional practices on this project) thus failing to meet the requirements. But his traditional role on enwp justified keeping some elevated privileges, so rather than cope with an exception to the steward rules a special role was created. Tada. But the change in naming of the permissions from the conventional role to the special one didn't actually confer an increase in authority— and when the extent of the actual authority to push privileged changes outside of enwp was tested the unequivocal answer[1] was that it didn't exist... and there really is no real reason to say that it ever existed. Some people want to spin this into a narrative about Jimmy's role on english Wikipedia, but thats bogus— This wasn't an english wikipedia thing, and rather than supporting the suggestion that this signals a loss of authority on English Wikipedia the actual expedience suggests the opposite: Look at relative concentrations of enwp users in the poll. ISTM that Enwp users are quite comfortable with Jimmy playing an important role as he has traditionally, and that almost everyone else is either indifferent or surprised by the notion— unsurprising because they haven't had the pleasure of working with him. (And, while it's been a long time since I've worked with Jimmy on anything, and while I disagreed with his involvement here, it's still the case that I completely understand where the traditional role on enwp comes from: He _is_ a great community member to work with... but the other project communities aren't filled with people that have that experience) [1] Or as unequivocal as anything involving 350 people can ever be: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo