[WikiEN-l] Re: Transition to WikiDemocracy

Wed Mar 10 15:17:39 UTC 2004

Sheldon Rampton a écrit:

> (1) Have Jimbo appoint a governing committee. This would inevitably be a 
> non-representative subset of the entire community, but having Jimbo as 
> our benevolent dictator is also non-representative. The advantage of a 
> governing committee is that it could be SOMEWHAT more representative of 
> the entire committee than just Jimbo by himself, and it could also take 
> some of the work off his shoulders.

For a healthy place, no cumulation of "power" should exist. An 
arbitrator should not be in the government. Nor a "honorary developer" 
(the one sysops, desysoping people). Separation of power is best.

> (2) Establish a voting system, through which a large subset of the 
> entire Wikipedia community is authorized to vote. Obviously we'll need 
> some way to exclude spam-voting by anonymous abusers, but if we gave a 
> vote to everyone who has supplied a unique and verified email address, 
> that would be a close enough approximation to universal enfranchisement 
> for practical purposes.

Each time we voted, it was clear enough that the little noise that could 
be brought by vandals was cancelled by all the good contributors.

> (3) Use the voting system to create a "parliament" of elected 
> representatives, whose members are charged with setting policies on 
> behalf of the entire community.

I disagree with this.

> (4) Alternately, we could try to develop a system of "policy juries," 
> through which everyone occasionally gets asked at random to participate 
> in policy decisions. For a discussion of how policy juries work, see:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy
> 
>  --Sheldon Rampton

Better. I also like the idea to do the same with arbitrators (like a 
jury)...and with sysops :-)