Re: [Wikipedia-l] is_sysop

From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)bomis.com> I didn't even know there was a sysop privilege. Does wikipedia come with a long laundry list of specific privileges, like VMS? When was sysop implemented? What does it consist of? I must confess that when I first encountered the wikipedia, I was immediately attracted to it because, unlike arch-rival nupedia, it didn't come with a few dozen pages explaining why an intellectual lightweight such as myself with no advanced degrees is unlikely to have anything of value to offer. Now I find out that even the wikipedia organization includes the concept of a "sysop". This, in itself, is not something I find alarming, but it does lower wikipedia a peg on my opinion scale and potentially on larger scales such as the mythical "public relations". According to the Reality Cracking school, it's impossible for anyone to delete anything. So why make it a rule for people to obey? I assumed you already had. Perhaps periodic posts of compressed content to obscure administrative regions of usenet? Or if even that is no longer part of the commons, maybe intellectual commoners like myself could be recruited as volunteers for the relatively simple tasks involved in downloading and archiving compressed wikipedia content. That would be a good first commandment. Perhaps a good second commandment would be that all records of infighting that somehow arises within the wikipedia organization be destroyed. :-)