[WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

[charles matthews]

"Molu" wrote

> You know as well as I do that that's not going to work. There is no old 
> guy with a beard sitting on top of the Wikipedia servers and determining 
> who is acting on WIkipedia's interest and who is not.

Like the man said, Please Stop Top-Posting.  It makes threads extra hard to 
follow.  Especially if you are going to say 'that', rathrr than take a few 
seconds to be specific.

Actually, there is the ArbCom, sitting pretty much on top of the en-WP pile. 
Actually, at least one Arbitrator has a beard and is middle-aged.

Actually, I was describing the line taken in dealing by Arbitrators in 
ruling on so-called 'wheel-warring' cases.  We have ruled that the admin who 
is acting in (what we agree is) the interests of the encyclopedia project, 
rather than one who is taking a formal and procedural line, can be dealt 
with leniently.  The cases are up there for anyone to see.

>WIkipedia is not a textbook, it's a real thing and we need to give 
>operational definitions instead of unrealisable abstract ones. The key 
>point here IS whether there is some sort of backing for the action taken, 
>not whether the action was 'clear-sighted', because the only available 
>measure of whether the action was clear-sighted is whether it has the 
>backing of the community.

No-no-no-no-no.  There is a substantial 'silent majority' around (one 
conclusion from the January elections) and plenty of vocal stuff from people 
who take a 'populist' line but don't actually have much support from solid 
citizens.  We have a measure of representative democracy on the 
administration, and direct democracy would not be an improvement.

Charles