[Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[Alec Conroy]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:52 PM, Adam Cuerden <cuerden at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimbo never revealed the reasons he was doing this - the FOX News
> attacks - until after he did them, and it was a fait accompli.
>
> He actively worked to mislead the community about the reasons and
> goals of his actions.
>
> After the community had made it very clear that they felt artworks
> should be protected, in their editing of [[Commons:Sexual content]],
> he ignored it and deleted artworks anyway, and wheel warred to keep
> them deleted.
>
> If you want people to focus on policy, you open a thread saying "In
> the opinion of the board, we need to deal with this issue. Here's a
> draft proposal, we need you to quickly deal with this, as the media
> may be looking into things.
>
> You don't A. not mention the reason you're doing it and, B. ignore
> anything and everything you get as feedback from the community.
> [...]
> Wikipedia has survived bad publicity in the past. It's never hurt us
> one bit. Jimbo's actions have hurt us. This should be all about Jimbo.

Ageed.  This issue /is/ all about Jimbo's founder powers.

Everyone understands that Commons isn't a free web host and the sheer
logistics force us to say "Thanks, but, we have enough porn right
now".   If the community does get to make its own policies again using
consensus, I'm sure it will succeed.

The only issue here is the fact that Jimbo, like any other admin,
needs to surrender his tools for misusing them yesterday.