[WikiEN-l] Will the WMF protect admins acting as their agentstoenforce policies?

[Florence Devouard]

Slim Virgin wrote:
> On 4/19/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Administrators are not appointed delegates of the Foundation, and they
>> do not receive any orders.
>>
> Anthere, a Board member has just overturned a consensus admin decision
> to keep Daniel Brandt blocked and has given an order not to re-block
> him. It wasn't couched in terms of an instruction, but that is the
> effect of it, otherwise he would have been reblocked immediately.

I agree. This certainly had an effect.
But I nevertheless repeat. Administrators are not appointed delegates of 
the Foundation (ie, the Foundation does not appoint them. The community 
does). Admins do not receive orders from the Foundation either. They may 
receive requests, and they may choose to comply with these requests 
(which is great :-)). But they do not receive orders in their daily 
activity of deleting pages, protecting pages, blocking editors, 
unblocking editors.

A board member has given an order. This is A board member. Only ONE 
board member amongst others. And the words of ONE board member are not 
the words of the Foundation, even though the press or many english 
wikipedians choose to believe so. Actually, there is only one board 
member whose words may be the Foundation voice, it is me. Not Jimbo.

The Foundation is a LEGAL entity, governed by a board of 7 people. These 
7 people work together and make decisions together. The outcome is a 
Foundation decision. But if ONE board member makes a decision alone, 
then it is just THIS board member decision. There is no way it should be 
considered a board decision.

I totally understand that you feel a board member has just overturned a 
consensus admin decision. But that overturn happened not because Jimbo 
is on the board, but because Jimbo is our SpecialGuy(tm). Call him 
leader, benevolent dictator, godking, fearless foundator, as you wish. 
This is in THIS capacity that he is able to overturn decisions. And the 
power of doing so does not come from being on the Foundation, but from 
being our SpecialGuy(tm), to which the community chooses to give a 
certain authority.

I am pretty sure that if tomorrow, Jimbo quit the board, he will still 
have this authority. Don't you think ?

> This is just one example of how these unilateral actions create
> difficulties for everyone -- legal difficulties for the Foundation's
> position that it is not a publisher, and difficulties for the rest of
> us in terms of community relations.

I agree. There are benefits to this situation though, and there are some 
drawbacks. It is not all black and white :-(

ant

> Sarah
> 
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