[WikiEN-l] WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR and WP:ATT

[David Gerard]

On 22/03/07, Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

> Sure, but the analogy isn't perfect. Who will guard the guards themselves?
> Admins close AfDs based on a mixture of that local consensus and policy,
> sure, but then we have Deletion Review to check that out. Who will look over
> Jimbo's shoulder in the manner that Deletion Review looks over the shoulders
> of admins closing AfDs? If democracy gives us tyranny of the majority,
> godkingship gives us discontent, and consensus ain't working any more, Jimbo
> acting as final arbiter for policy just won't work: the English Wikipedia is
> too big to be run by one man in this manner.


Big time. The mistake a lot of the troll-critics (Wikipedia Review,
wikitruth) make is to assume that anything wrong with English
Wikipedia is deliberate, rather than the emergent behaviour of a large
volunteer organisation and entirely in line with that. i.e., it's
human and bureaucratic stupidity rather than active or passive malice.

i.e. we're doing something that's hardly ever been done before (a huge
wiki-based encyclopedia enterprise), which means we don't have a lot
of experience from other people to apply to avoiding the standard
fucked-upnesses typical of large volunteer organisations in our
particular case. i.e., we're all winging it.

I think Jimbo was quite aware some time ago that micromanagement just
isn't possible ... and that macro-management isn't really either.


> To be honest, there's no real reason why the English Wikipedia should be
> Jimbo's personal fiefdom - which is what it is. The amount of control the
> community really has over that is minimal, which causes not only balls-ups -
> cf Essjay, if the community had been allowed to see that one sooner a lot of
> drama would have been avoided - and also community discontent - cf Credental
> Verification, which will doubtless be railroaded through regardless of
> consensus on the matter, or lack of it.


It has to be workable and has to gain general community support for
people to bother.

BLP was strongly pushed by Jimbo and the Foundation, but it was (a) an
obviously good idea whose time had come (b) we promptly scrambled to
get something good and workable in place in remarkably quick order.


> A lot of this is irrelevant to me whatever: I'll always keep on writing
> articles, because that's darn fun. On the whole, though, I think perhaps the
> Arbcom taking a more proactive role in determing consensus and how that
> works with policy is preferable. It isn't our wiki, but it should be, and
> that gives the community some more clout.


This is to a large extent how it happens now. c.f. Arbcom notes that
they aren't taking action against an editor or admin in a particular
case, but *do* expect a higher standard of behaviour in future.


- d.