[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway?

[David Gerard]

On 21/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> >On 3/21/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> >>Can he confer this right on others?

> That wouldn't make sense.  This is not a question of rules, but of
> charisma.  God-kings are uncreatable.


In practice, open-source and open-content projects tend to give a
great deal of respect and deference to the founder. This tends to work
out fine most of the time, and where it doesn't the founder may quit
or there may be a fork. (See [[fork (software)]], which I wrote a lot
of.)

On en:wp, Jimbo expressly handed some strong powers over to the
Arbitration Committee, on the basis that Jimbo wasn't scaling.

He still strongly concerns himself with how en:wp is going and
working. And that's arguably appropriate even as a Foundation board
member, because it's the WMF's flagship project, gets most of the
public attention and takes up a whole database server to itself.


> >>How do we distinguish
> >>between Jimbo as normal editor and Jimbo as editor with godlike
> >>powers?

> You guess. :-)


He will often say "speaking as a community member" when he is, e.g. on
Chacor's recent RFA. Which I suppose means use your good sense :-)
There is the problem that every cough he coughs is noted down and
overanalysed by devotees of Jimbomancy.


> >Jimbo's power is due mostly to the community accepting his pronouncements

> The restructure of the Board has played to Jimbo's strong suit:
> promoting Wikipedia in all corners of the world.  This is bound to
> affect his ability to be online at any given time.  Others are much
> better at maintaining financial records, or keeping members informed, or
> doing those other mundane tasks that keep a large organization functioning.


Yep. PR person for the Foundation and for en:wp is an incredibly
important job and it's good for en:wp that he's right into that.


> >>5) What concrete changes have taken place as a result of Jimbo being
> >>succeeded by Anthere as chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation Board?
> >>What is the day-to-day effect of these changes?

> >The board doesn't normally get involved in day to day matters. It is
> >of course impossible to say what would have differed if jimbo had
> >stayed as chair. Changes since the switchover are basically the
> >foundation becoming far less ad-hoc.

> That's very important in such a large group of people.


It's also good that it shows there isn't a succession problem, i.e.
that the organisation can do fine if its founder is hit by a bus or
whatever. That's a *big* what-if for a growing organisation,
particularly one running a now-famous website.

(When I started with Wikipedia in late 2003, we were #500 in the
world. I was *really impressed*. Now we're top-10. We're mainstream.
HOLY CRAP.)


> >>6) What is Jimbo's position as a spokesperson for Wikipedia or the
> >>Wikimedia Foundation? What does it mean when Jimbo tells the press
> >>that some change "will probably be going ahead"? Are we to interpret
> >>that as an order to be obeyed?

> >Up to you. You may find yourself rather outnumbered if you don't but not always.

> Having had the experience some years back of working for a flamboyand
> person who loved being in the media, I quicly learned not to give too
> much weight to what is said to the media, and to give even less weight
> to what people thought was being said.  Much of what is said to the
> media in a first instance off the cuff and not necessarily supported by
> a broad consensus.


I giggle hysterically when I see people calling the press a "reliable
source." The press is an *easily checked* source. That's quite
different from having any connection to reality or having accurately
quoted anything anyone has ever said. When doing WMF press, I've
learnt to speak almost exclusively in either unambiguous soundbites or
in almost-unquotable waffle.


> >>7) Are the answers to any of these questions different for the
> >>different language Wikipedias, or other Wikimedia projects?

> >Other projects tend to be more independent of the board and the like
> >anyway. This extends to Jimbo.

> The fact that AFAIK Jimbo is unilingual is a big factor in that.


Yeah. This is BTW another reason why Florence as chair, and Erik,
Oskar and Jan-Bart on the board is good - so that the WMF isn't
Americocentric even by accident, despite being US-based and having
been founded by an American.


- d.