[WikiEN-l] Re: AfD Threshold being Revised Downward Again?

Wed Sep 21 04:28:43 UTC 2005

>AfD has two deeply seated problems.
>1) It is unmanageably big, and will only get bigger.
>2) The case for deletion can usually be made with a cursory look at
>the article. The case for inclusion often requires mildly substantive  
>research using non-Wikipedia sources. Thus deletion is always going  
>to be a fundamentally easier case to argue.
>Thus it will always be the case that AfD becomes unmanageable, and  
>that the unmanageability affects the exclusionists noticably less  
>than the inclusionists.
>-Snowspinner

Wasn't the above basically the same argument for the last government iteration of the Soviet Union?  I have an alternate suggestion on how a society should be governed that I'm sure you can extrapolate from the following quotes:
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. 
— C. S. Lewis 

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. 
— Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819 

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? 
— Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 inaugural address 

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficient... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. 
— Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis 

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue. 
— Barry Goldwater 

The state calls its own violence ‘law’, but that of the individual ‘crime’. 
— Max Stirner 

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. 
— Patrick Henry, speech of June 5 1788 

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. 
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787 

& what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. 
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787 

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. 
— John F. Kennedy 

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. 
— Daniel Webster 

What, then is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. 
— Frederic Bastiat, The Law 

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. 
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859 

You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered. 
— Lyndon Johnson, former President of the U.S. 

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? 
— James Madison, Federalist Papers 62 

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. 
— John Locke, A Treatise Concerning Civil Government 

Don’t ever think you know what’s right for the other person. He might start thinking he knows what’s right for you. 
— Paul Williams, ‘Das Energi’ 

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. 
— Edward Abbey 

What luck for rulers, that men do not think. 
— Adolf Hitler 

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. 
— Friedrich Nietzsche 

For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act? 
— Dante Alighieri 

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think they’ll hate you. 
— Anonymous 

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws. 
— Tacitus 

The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone — one which barely escapes being no government at all. 
— H. L. Mencken 

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
— Lord Acton 

The best government is that in which the law speaks instead of the lawyer.
— M.L. Byrn 

Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government.
— Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Residence Bill 

Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.
— Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson 

The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training. 
— Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett 

[Without becoming] familiarized with the habits and practice of self-government,... the political vessel is all sail and no ballast.
— Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn 

[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.
— Thomas Jefferson to M. de Marbois 

I am not discouraged by [a] little difficulty; nor have I any doubt that the result of our experiment will be, that men are capable of governing themselves without a master.
— Thomas Jefferson to T. B. Hollis 

The hand of the people... has proved that government to be the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
— Thomas Jefferson to Edward Tiffin 

We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to insure a long-continued and honest administration of its powers.
— Thomas Jefferson to Abbe Arnoux 
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It has been argued, in this mailing list, that Wikipedia is a company, and that many companies are run as a successful hierarchy with only a profit motive to keep the grunts in line.  In making this argument, however, we have to realize that we don't pay the grunts anything.  They are only here because they think they can make a real difference.  When they figure out that only the top administrators have any real power to influence the content of articles, they make a few vain appeals to "level the playing field" and then leave in frustration.

Now that we have grown to an unwieldy size, it is painfully obvious that we cannot continue top-down approval of writings.  Yesterday, User:Carbonite deleted an entire article without reading the definitions involved or understanding the issues. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Carbonite&oldid=23635316#The_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence) I feel confident that, if he had time to read the article he was redirecting toward, he would have realized that the people involved were doing nothing but trying to slam the U.S. Declaration of Independence via POV conclusions and original research.  Carbonite did not have time to look at his actions objectively for the same reason that the Soviet Union found its task unwieldy: top-down micromanagement of large-scale social interactions takes too long.  The only efficient way to keep Wikipedia going at this point in our growth, is to make it self-manageable.  Giving up top-down control sounds like a risk, but many of
 the greatest thinkers of history are behind us, and look at the result if we don't: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Carbonite&oldid=23635316#The_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

Thank you for your consideration and, hopefully, your action,
Zephram Stark  zephramstark at yahoo.com
432-224-6991

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