[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit

[Adam Cuerden]

The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely
attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases.

This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical
artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted,
and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until
after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the
problem.

Examples:

Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png<-
Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg<-
Wheelwarred with two admins this time.

----

Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on
Wikipedia projects for that purpose:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AWiki-fisting.png<-
Edit warred with three admins

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=File%3AWiki-facial.svg

----

Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any
discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of
them*

From
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=38891861&oldid=38891748

"I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will
have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography
and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time
to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo
Wales#top|<span class="signature-talk">talk</span>]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010
(UTC)"


How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are
we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to
find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and
which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed
from the articles they were used in?

Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related
to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This
despite his initial claim (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=38820363&oldid=38819608)
that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that
started
the controversy.

If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy
related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are
horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were
politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it
offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge.
Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic.

There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which  has gained
widespread support since his actions. (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag )


-A. C.