[Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance

[David Goodman]

As I interpret what André says, I agree with him:

We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many
ordinary members in  each aspect of the government of the society.  We
need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
forms.

To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be
self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we   need a
limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as
admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in
making the decision.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM,  <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>> andreengels at gmail.com writes:
>>
>>
>>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
>>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
>>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>>
>>
>> I would submit that this tells you something very significant.
>> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of
>> freedom.
>
> No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who
> is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair
> etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion.
>
>> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it.
>> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor
>> has no "friend" on their side.  You cannot appeal to the police to stop the
>> police.
>
> You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What
> you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community
> automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion
> that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times
> too few to be blocked.
>
>> That's my main point.  However it has to be worked out.  We need a
>> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor.
>
> No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
> don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
> it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
> helping creating it.
>
>
> --
> André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
>
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