[Foundation-l] Adult and Illegal content on Wikimedia projects

Fri Apr 7 09:51:21 UTC 2006

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>I am not personally involved in Wikibooks, so I'm not about to push my 
>policy views there, but I would be inclined to exclude such material on 
>the basis that it does more harm than good.  At the same time I believe 
>in the importance of the community to Wikis.  A community leader (and 
>Robert's regular comments in this mailing list suggest that he is such a 
>leader in Wikibooks) needs to exercise skills at building consensus, and 
>also needs to be able to override community opinion when he feels that 
>there is an important enough matter of principle at stake.  When he does 
>that he needs to face the inevitable flak.
>
>Calling on Jimbo to decide on something is a cop-out.  It's a sad 
>admission that the community isn't strong enough to settle its own 
>problems.  It is strategically unsound for a general to micromanage 
>local battles.
>
>  
>
It is strategically unsound to design and implement a political machine 
around micromanagement and then refuse to manage.  Unless of course 
one's strategy is to divert web traffic elsewhere.

Rather than implying Roberth is an ineffectual leader after placing any 
emergent leadership in an ineffectual position subject to Jimmy says 
grams; perhaps you should call on Jimbo to go assist the Wikibooks 
community in their discussions regarding how editorial policy might be 
established, maintained and how an effective board capable of enforcing 
that policy with community support might be initiated.

The statement "Calling on Jimbo to decide on something is a cop-out." is 
as intellectually dishonest statement as I have personally witnessed on 
the internet given the fact that you or someone signing as you has been 
present while Wikipedia and Wikimedia evolved through the owner, 
founder, "Jimbo says ...", god king, stacked board sequence to its 
current state.

The fact is that the sole established factor deciding editorial policy 
in all Wikimedia projects is Jimmy's opinion regarding the "NPOV" policy 
which he mandates and which reduces in the case of controversy to his 
opinion or the opinion of his hand picked delegates and probably his 
legal liability as a publisher as per his  lawyer's opinions regarding 
Florida and U.S. federal law which are not always made public to the 
"community".

How exactly would you propose that Roberth or any other emergent 
leadership "override community opinion" when an important prinicple is 
at stake?  In the final analysis the Wikimedia Foundation controls the 
hard drives and servers and it is controlled by expressed intent and 
design by one person.  The only way to override or implement "community 
opinion" is to be in concurrence with "Jimmy says ...."

I suggest if the Wikimedia Foundation is serious in its pitch for cash
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
it should be giving some serious thought to an authentic editorial 
policy and  a board actually deriving legitimacy from its "community" of 
diverse stakeholders rather than a single founder and his personal  
financial interests and philisophical opinions or fallacies.

Once that overall policy has been articulated and ratified by 
stakeholders in a form that does not require a final judgement from the 
godking, or the stacked Board, or their selected trusted minions every 
two controversial kilobytes then perhaps you can chide "community 
leaders" for the failure of their "communities" to establish and manage 
their own policies consistent with the mandates of the Wikimedia 
Foundation in exchange for bandwidth, servers, and administrative support.

regards,
lazyquasar