[WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

Wed Aug 20 16:35:17 UTC 2003

On Wednesday 20 August 2003 05:07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
> >And these written policies are apparently developed
> >in back rooms with no input from the community.
> >Convenient for you until you realize it goes directly
> >against your "policy" of forcing openness upon the
> >unwashed masses.
>
> I don't agree with either of these sentences.

No, I'm sure you don't -- they are not there for anyone to agree with, they 
are there to attempt to make my point.

> I don't see any way for
> our policy development process to be any more open to input from the
> community.  I can't think of a less secretive or more noisy way to
> organize anything.  There are no back rooms here -- everything is done
> in public, with wide advertising throughout the system of how it's
> done.  We're always open to suggestions, of course, but I think the
> system right now is a model of public accountability.

Except mav suddenly seems to think that a unilateral policy change without any 
discussion or even notice is OK. I don't remember that little detail being 
advertised anywhere in the system.

> The second sentence bewilders me completely.  What do your scare
> quotes around 'policy' mean?

They mean I'm assuming mav doesn't realize the full implications of what he's 
arguing for.

> What do you mean by 'forcing openness'? Somehow our openness is *imposed* on 
> the world?

I'm unsurprised that this confused you, it wasn't the best way to put it. But 
it's being forced upon those that should have had a say in the policy and did 
not.

> And finally, I certainly don't agree with the notion of 'unwashed
> masses' -- that attitude has no place within my outlook.  The very
> foundation of our wiki philosophy is that ordinary people can do
> extraordinary things, so that there's no need for elaborate
> hierarchies of control.

The hierarchy that appears to have fallen into place unplanned is not 
elaborate at all. It has two levels: Admins - Others.

An admin made a unilateral policy change, and it's being essentially ignored 
or defended by other admins on the grounds that they think the policy is a 
good one.

One wonders what would have happened if *I* had made a unilateral policy 
change.