[WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

[Jake Nelson]

On 3/30/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Back then the project was merely two years old. We could afford to be less
> picky about admins back then.
> Some people have gone over the top in their requirements, but how can we
> address that without affecting the fact the entire community has a voice in
> the process?

1. I'd say we can afford to be less picky about admins now.
2. The community SHOULD have a voice in the process, but that's not
exactly what's happening.

It's a similar issue to AFD... a certain group gets established around
a section of Wikipedia, and develops rules, procedure, and norms based
on the attitude of that group, which may be very different from those
of the rest of the community. Then, the tasks (important to the
functioning of Wikipedia) that're entrusted to them start being
handled in ways that are not in Wikipedia's best interest.

(Sidenote: While Jimbo and others assert that BLP issues are our
biggest PR issue (and while I can understand completely why they'd
think so), in my experience, AFD has done far more damage, and has
made enemies out of a lot of people who wanted to help us.)

I don't know the answer to this... it's similar to some "committee as
fiefdom" tendencies I've seen in some organizations IRL. Those cases
varied depending on the nature of the organization and the choices
they made... essentially, they either dealt with it or were crippled
by it.

Generally speaking, the ones that successfully resolved it were ones
that 1) recognized the problem as something that needed to be fixed,
in an active sense, and 2) empowered someone (typically their
officers, but in some groups of an anti-hierarchical bent, an
individual or group specially elected for this role) to specifically
"deal with it", and agreed to support those thus empowered in
implementing whatever remedies they suggested.

When I say "crippled by it", I mean that the organization got bogged
down in internal issues, and ceased making outwardly appreciable
progress towards their goal. Sometimes they didn't fix it, and lost
members and momentum to a more active group... other times they
recovered after a change of leadership.

Just my experience...

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]