As I interpret what André says, I agree with him: We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many ordinary members in each aspect of the government of the society. We need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion, expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established forms.
To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we need a limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in making the decision. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Andre Engels <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time, >> [email protected] writes: >> >> >>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours >>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get >>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>> >> >> I would submit that this tells you something very significant. >> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of >> freedom. > > No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who > is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair > etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion. > >> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it. >> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor >> has no "friend" on their side. You cannot appeal to the police to stop the >> police. > > You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What > you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community > automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion > that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times > too few to be blocked. > >> That's my main point. However it has to be worked out. We need a >> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor. > > No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We > don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating > it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not > helping creating it. > > > -- > André Engels, [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
