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

[geni]

On 3/22/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Outsiders often imagine that we have a much greater degree of procedure
> than we actually do.  We have a group of friends working under "rough
> consensus and running code" and decision-making is highly distributed
> and what may appear to be lines of authority are often merely lines of
> respect and thoughtfulness.
>
> In the case of "nofollow"... to the best of my knowledge, the history is
> that it was implemented without my knowledge or approval (which is
> normal and fine) in various (some? all? depending on local opinion?)
> languages except en.wikipedia.org.  There were discussions about it,
> both public and private, and I expressed my own concerns about it.  Out
> of respect for me, the implementation was delayed for a long time on
> English Wikipedia while I talked to Matt Cutts at google about it.

Not that simple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Nofollow#Implementation_of_the_vote


>
> (BTW, Brion would know when and why nofollow was implemented elsewhere.)
>

March 6, 2005



> Matt recommended that we use it, and I reconsidered various arguments
> that people had made about it, and I dropped my objections to it.
> Sometime later, Brion Vibber, acting on his own authority as CTO and the
> leader of his own part of the whole Wikipedia beast, went ahead and
> implemented it.  (Did I ask him to do it, or did he notice my dropping
> my objections and just do it?  I don't remember but the question really
> misses the point.)
>


"Having been requested by Jimmy to do so"

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/061137.html

No evidences of his acting on his own authority.

> Now, you can imagine this as an instance of me being the decider, but I
> think the truth is a lot more complex... and a lot more wonderful...
> than that image would suggest.
>


No it isn't. You took an action (that has had minimal impact due to
spamming for traffic) that the community had debated in the past and
had not come to a consensus to support.
-- 
geni