Stan Shebs wrote:
stevertigo wrote:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net>
wrote:
Step up.
By this, I assume youre expressing your vote of confidence.
Its much appreciated and certainly returned.
To be a little more constructive :-), I see the leadership vacuum
too.
When I look at the leadership vacuum, I don't see anything. ;-)
I think there are many editors who would like to lead
in one
way or another, in fact many of them are on this mailing list at
least partly in the hopes of exerting some influence.
This does happen, but sometimes if you hope too strongly to exert
influence it can escape you. I have suggested some things in the past
that have had a major result, but also many others that got nowhere.
Part of leadership is recognizing one's own limitation, and
circumsribing one's own leadership aspirations. We may have individuals
who will be great and influential at orgainzing a specific topical
project, but will totally lack the scope and vision that it takes to
lead at a higher level where one must deal with the unexpected.
But I don't think there's a whole lot of
incentive or reward for
leadership, so attempts tend to be brief and unsuccessful. Even if
one manages to organize several like-minded editors into a
cooperative effort, the newest of newbies can still come in and
disrupt, oftentimes with the support of onlookers shrieking about
cabals, and the would-be leader sees his/her investment in WP come
to naught. It's as if you were to get elected as prime minister,
but any recent immigrant could unilaterally nullify any action you
took and blacken your name in the papers - who would even bother to
run for the position?
It's not about the newbies. If your visions are too easily derailed by
newbies you may have reached your level of incompetence. It's much more
difficult to deal with established users who have gone off the rails. A
major faction there are those who have made tremendous contributions as
editors while at the same time they are unable to get along with
anybody. We can all remember a few like that.
WP's anarchy doesn't always work in the service
of the goal of
producing the free encyclopedia, but with so many anarchists
ideologically committed to working against effective governance,
it's hard even to discuss how the situation might be changed for
the better.
These "anarchists" are often bright questioning people. The average IQ
among regularly active Wikipedians is probably well above average. To
say that they are "ideologically committed to working against effective
governance" is not accurate. That requires too much premeditation. I
think that it would be more accurate to say that their observation of
personal and world experience has spurred a cynicism that resists being
governed.
Ec