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

[John Lee]

On 6/27/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> Marc Riddell schreef:
> > One more volley: Like it or not - threatening to some or not; what's
> needed
> > here is a strong leader.
>
> Why? What exactly would this strong leader do? Would he take over the
> functions of existing Wikipedia structures (WP:RFA, maybe? DRV? ArbCom?)
> Or do you see anything that needs to be done that is not done today?
>
> Can you please give some examples what the strong leader would do on
> Wikipedia?


Speaking from experience, the process of policymaking is so haphazard and
difficult to handle because of the nebulous concept of "consensus" (for
more, see Zoney's recent post on consensus). Practical policy changes, e.g.
[[WP:PROD]], are still possible because the "descriptive, not prescriptive"
model applies, but for non-practical things, how will we ever come to a
consensus on more abstract/meta issues? Things like the userboxen wars got
sorted out eventually, but not without a lot of pain and grief that I think
was unnecessary.

Johnleemk