[WikiEN-l] Re: Lir and his clones

[Daniel Mayer]

LittleDan wrote: 
>....
> In all of the other wikis (except for the ones modeled
> after us), there is no "supreme-dictator-for-life" (as
> you put it, perhaps humorsly, in a previous post).
> Most other wikis despise that we have one person
> running the whole thing. I don't think we should keep
> doing your unpopular decisions just because you own
> the servers. When you created Wikipedia, you also gave
> up control of it. We are a community, not governed by
> one person, but by everyone. On many of the About,
> FAQ, and similar pages, you state that Wikipedia is an
> anarchy, but that really is not true. As long as you
> unilaterally make decisions like this, wikipedia will
> never be a true anarchy, always a dictatorship.
> --LittleDan

This is way off base here. Jimbo has been tirelessly caring, compassionate and 
fair and has been a true "benevolent dictator" in the spirit of Linus 
Torvalds. 

His guidance and the resources he has donated has gotten us to where we are. 
Not only does he spend a good deal of his time on Wikipedia-related things 
but he has also donated many tens of thousands of dollars of his own money 
into the project. He didn't have to do that. 

And he did this all this without the faintest hint that he expected to get 
anything out of Wikipedia other than the satisfaction in knowing that he is 
nurturing a project that is creating one of the best free resources on the 
Internet. Trying to ensure that human knowledge is made freely available to 
everyone; IMO, few things are nobler than that.

That said, I do want to say that any "dictatorial" type of system is 
inherently flawed and the results are only as good as the leadership and 
mediation skills of the current dictator (which can be anything between 
benevolent to malevolent). 

The Romans started on the tract of a dictatorial-type system back with 
Augustus Caesar. Now Augustus was a great leader - just like Jimbo - but the 
system he created totally depended on the strength of charactor of the 
Emperor. So when a person with poor leadership skills or morals takes over in 
such a system then we have Neros and Caligulas. 

But in a free wiki like this it is easier to "split the empire" (sic fork) if 
we have bad leadership. This threat should put some limit on how "malevolent" 
a dictator can be.  

So there are some checks and balances even in the system we have now. Although 
this really is the ultimate check so a better system with more checks and 
balances is needed. 

You are young so I'm assuming your angry outbust is really directed at the 
system and not the man.

We /do/ plan on changing the system as part of the process of setting up the 
Wikimedia Foundation, BTW, so there is nothing to be angry about. 

Save your ideas for when we start to draft Wikimedia's charter.

In the spirit of WikiLove (a Jimbo concept :),

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)