[WikiEN-l] It all makes so much sense now!

[John Lee]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 2:38 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
> > He also has, separately from his Board role, the final smackdown on
> > en:wp, which he almost never uses (it's delegated to the Arbitration
> > Committee because Jimbo doesn't scale) and which causes great
> > arguments every time he does.
> >
> I'm sure there are a lot of people who see his comments on either side
> of a dispute as so much drive-by.  Given the amount of his travelling,
> his participation in some of these chronic debates is necessarily limited.
> > I find myself amazed at how outsiders think Jimbo has absolute power
> > at Wikipedia, when if he said the sky was blue lots of people would
> > disagree almost by reflex ... and then it's down to his powers of
> > persuasion, same as if any of us want to convince people of something.
> > I suppose he has a lot more ears listening to him.
> There's a certain amount of hero-worshiping going on, whether he agrees
> with it or not.  It's more like a game of Simon says.  There are any
> number of debaters who are not past trying to win an argument saying,
> "But on September 30, 2004, Jimbo said ..."  He may have changed his
> mind since, or the quotation may be out of context.  Such drop-dead
> arguments from authority tend to circumvent whatever the real current
> issue.
>

That's surprising. I haven't seen a whole lot of this arguing from authority
in a while. Could you point to any recent examples? I haven't been
participating in policy debates, but the last time I remember encountering
this was a year or two back.

Johnleemk