[Wikipedia-l] NYTimes.com: Google may host encyclopedia project

[Chad Perrin]

Mark Williamson wrote:
> Of course.
> 
> But a more complete democracy would've been better.
> 

This touches, somewhat, on political philosophy, both in theory and in 
practice.  As such, and because I pay probably more attention to 
political philosophy than many people would consider healthy, I have a 
fair number of strong opinions on such matters as this.

In this particular case, I have to say that I disagree that "a more 
complete democracy" would necessarily be "better".  In my opinion, 
democracy should be used to allow consensus to have influence in 
administrative matters, and not to allow consensus to CONTROL 
administrative matters.  If "democracy" were "complete" in the running 
of Wikipedia, it may well end up being voted out of "wiki" status and 
become a hierarchically managed academic project.

That sort of risk of rampant popular whim having direct control over 
something is precisely the reason the early US government ratified the 
Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights.  There is a set of 
rules for the organization of the effort that are largely inaccessible 
to the public, democratic will, precisely to protect the ideals of the 
organization from the whims of its constituency.  While Wikipedia isn't 
a government, it too needs (in my opinion, at least) a separation 
between the democratically expressed will of its "public" and the Big 
Decisions, though probably with a strong set of rules in place to limit 
the liberties that can be taken within the range of whatever mechanism 
is implemented to maintain that separation.

Pure democracy can be viewed in as unflattering a light as pure 
authoritarianism.  If the most important part of the endeavor is its 
ideals, we should aim to support those ideals over any superficial 
methodologies of implementation.

--
Chad

(PS:  prior statements quoted below for context)

>>Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What worries me is that the final say rests with a small-but-trusted
>>>group of individuals, not with the community. This is the trouble of
>>>our switch from a complete democracy to a not-so-representative
>>>democracy (only two of the board members were elected) - we have to
>>>trust that these people will be gentle with our future.
>>
>>I think you're idealizing the 'primeval' state of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as
>>a web site (with its attendant collection of computers, DNS registrations,
>>and other unique features) was never owned or operated by some sort of
>>collective you could describe as a 'complete democracy'. It was run by
>>Jimbo Wales, and he had the final say in everything- he was just nice
>>enough to defer to the community in most matters. If Google had proposed a
>>deal with Wikipedia before the WMF was founded, then the final say would
>>rest with him just as much as it currently rests with the Board of
>>Trustees of the Wikimedia foundation.