Kelly Martin wrote:
On 9/19/06, Jon Harald Søby jhsoby@gmail.com wrote:
Anyways, my point was that indirect elections _might_ turn out to have inaccurate results (though that is a rather rare situation), and that it would be especially hard to arrange this on Wikimedia projects.
Indirect election of officials in voluntary organizations with large, geographically diverse membership is common and may actually be the norm. Comparisons with election of geopolitical leaders ("involuntary organizations") are simply inapposite; there are so many functional differences between electing a head of government and electing the officers of a voluntary organization.
Rejecting the idea simply because it superficially resembles the American college of electors (which, by the way, is a very strange form of indirect election) is, frankly, silly. Rejecting it because it seems too difficult to implement today is shortsighted.
Let's also not forget that direct democracy elected Hitler, and yet we still use it as well.
I'm not sure how "direct" a concept of democracy you have in mind, but Hitler was *appointed* Chancellor. After Hindenburg's death, he declared himself Führer. Thereafter, he rushed through a vote to ratify this action, but if that's democracy, so was Saddam Hussein's last election. If you mean that he personally was democratically elected, I don't see it. If you simply mean that he became politically powerful enough to turn a parliamentary republic into a totalitarian state, that too is a cautionary tale, but this is an odd way of expressing that.
I don't think an argument about different electoral formats is getting at the right issue, anyway. The concern about elections in a Wikimedia context is primarily an extension of the difficulty that the right to vote in our elections corresponds only rather inexactly to anything that could constitute citizenship. It might be possible to address that with a membership model, but as I've pointed out before, membership has its own problems.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
I'm not sure how "direct" a concept of democracy you have in mind, but Hitler was *appointed* Chancellor. After Hindenburg's death, he declared himself Führer. Thereafter, he rushed through a vote to ratify this action, but if that's democracy, so was Saddam Hussein's last election. If you mean that he personally was democratically elected, I don't see it. If you simply mean that he became politically powerful enough to turn a parliamentary republic into a totalitarian state, that too is a cautionary tale, but this is an odd way of expressing that.
I don't think an argument about different electoral formats is getting at the right issue, anyway. The concern about elections in a Wikimedia context is primarily an extension of the difficulty that the right to vote in our elections corresponds only rather inexactly to anything that could constitute citizenship. It might be possible to address that with a membership model, but as I've pointed out before, membership has its own problems.
--Michael Snow
Your comparison is accurate and to the point - with one exception. There are no individual rights of any kind in the Wikipedia "Society". You can be banned (digitally killed) by any "mob" currently in power. There are no guarantees of individual rights, bill of rights, or any other instrument to guarantee equality and rights for any member of this community to protect their fundamental rights to exist.
It's not even close to democracy, as I said before, it's more like a Roman Senatorial Forum with a primitive form of democratic representation, along with an "Emperor" and it exhibits all the same views towards individual rights as the Roman Empire -- it you tread on the wrong toes, you are summarily crucified (digitally). Wikipedia is the closest to an actual "society" that exists on the internet, but it has a long way to go to claim the honorable label of "democracy". Like all evolving civilizations and societies, it seems to need to repeat the long march through history to evolve to that point -- if it ever gets there.
So much for political discourse...
:-)
Jeff
"So much for political discourse..."
And sticking to not violating Godwin's Law, Mr. Snow! Congratulations!
On 9/20/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
I'm not sure how "direct" a concept of democracy you have in mind, but Hitler was *appointed* Chancellor. After Hindenburg's death, he declared himself Führer. Thereafter, he rushed through a vote to ratify this action, but if that's democracy, so was Saddam Hussein's last election. If you mean that he personally was democratically elected, I don't see it. If you simply mean that he became politically powerful enough to turn a parliamentary republic into a totalitarian state, that too is a cautionary tale, but this is an odd way of expressing that.
I don't think an argument about different electoral formats is getting at the right issue, anyway. The concern about elections in a Wikimedia context is primarily an extension of the difficulty that the right to vote in our elections corresponds only rather inexactly to anything that could constitute citizenship. It might be possible to address that with a membership model, but as I've pointed out before, membership has its own problems.
--Michael Snow
Your comparison is accurate and to the point - with one exception. There are no individual rights of any kind in the Wikipedia "Society". You can be banned (digitally killed) by any "mob" currently in power. There are no guarantees of individual rights, bill of rights, or any other instrument to guarantee equality and rights for any member of this community to protect their fundamental rights to exist.
It's not even close to democracy, as I said before, it's more like a Roman Senatorial Forum with a primitive form of democratic representation, along with an "Emperor" and it exhibits all the same views towards individual rights as the Roman Empire -- it you tread on the wrong toes, you are summarily crucified (digitally). Wikipedia is the closest to an actual "society" that exists on the internet, but it has a long way to go to claim the honorable label of "democracy". Like all evolving civilizations and societies, it seems to need to repeat the long march through history to evolve to that point -- if it ever gets there.
So much for political discourse...
:-)
Jeff
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org