stevertigo wrote
Is the community *not to be trusted
with certain policy changes? And is Jimbo therefore expected to take a
more direct of formalized role in this area?
I don't think 'formalizing' anything helps. After all we spend a high
proportion of this list's bandwidth on typical 'hard cases make bad law'
objections to more formal formulations of well known WP principles, and that tends to be
hot air.
We have had Bagehot already, the theorist of the stage machinery of the British
constitution. I think another and more up-to-date analogy is the [[golden share]]. We have
the "voting is evil" version of that. De facto things can happen on enWP that
Jimbo really doesn't agree with; but de jure one can't call that a consensus. It
is kind of indicative when a discussion about whether there is consensus on a policy page
change turns into a massive debate ...
Charles
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