[WikiEN-l] Why are veterans so militant of late; The Future. (was Bus Uncle)

[Tony Sidaway]

On 6/6/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Unfortunately, this makes two pretty presumtuous statements. One, it
> presumes that the 'old core' of admins, those that can trace their WP time
> back to 2004-05 and earlier, will remain in power.

No such assumption is made.  I don't think there has been a single
finite set of editors that one could term "the core community".  But
that core community exists, it enjoys continuity, and it exercises
effective control over the direction of Wikipedia.


> Let's not be coy--the 'core' community of editors, admins, and defrocked
> admins you refer to numbers at best around 100 people or less.

Oh I think it's much, much larger than that.  Hundreds, certainly.
Thousands, possibly.

> Unless the
> system itself is changed to do something to assure that this core be held in
> some higher level of clout, when pushes comes to shove, there will be no
> recourse but to edit war over policy pages (gee, that's not happening almost
> daily yet, is it?) or to have absurdly overblown RFAR hearings over minutae.

No, just a tweak here and a tweak there.  The trick is to know where,
then and how to push.


>
> My point is, in short, that the simple weight of the massive number of users
> will be deciding on the ultimate path and fate of Wikipedia. Not Tony
> Sidaway, nor David, nor Kelly Martin, nor Jimbo Wales, nor me, nor any other
> lone person, or small group of people.

I detect lack of realism and undue pessimism.   There are at least ten
times the number of users than there were in 1995, but in that time
policy has become more aggressive, the wiki is better organised,
automated editing has seen a massive increase in the power to
implement core policies, and the core community has grown more
powerful.  Like someone said once, it's like Calvinball.