QUOTE(Cla68 @ Mon 14th July 2008, 1:42am)
What's especially frustrating is that pleas to Jimbo to do something about it get answered with, "The current system is fine." If Jimbo would come out and say, "ArbCom is doing a good job dealing with user conduct issues, and now I'm going to establish similar committees to govern policy and content disputes," there would, of course, be some complaints, but I think it would get done as Jimbo said it. In spite of the serious blows to his credibility over the last six months or so, he still has the position and power to do this if he desired.
My suspicion is that he probably doesn't, unless the Foundation is prepared to back him up and say that he has the power to do that sort of thing, even against community consensus. A couple of weeks ago I tried starting
a page clarifying just what Jimbo's authority was on the English Wikipedia and whence he derives that power, but it hasn't come to much. I thought the Foundation would be able to clarify the question to some degree, so I asked Cary Bass (he struck me as the most appropriate staff member, though I'm not expert on the division of responsibilities within the WMF office) -
here's the result of that endeavor. In point of fact, I had
requested Jimbo's comments already, but he didn't seem interested in providing them.
In summary, it's completely unclear what formal power Jimbo wields, and nobody in a position to do so seems interested in clarifying it.
QUOTE(Cla68 @ Mon 14th July 2008, 1:42am)
I know that I've advocated removing Jimbo from the ArbCom election process, but I'm not contradicting myself. I think he can make decisions to form and implement committees and/or other governance bodies. But, he can then let the community run them instead of holding final appointment authority for himself.
Replace "Jimbo" with "the WMF Board" and you've described the key plank of my election platform (sorry, I had to point that out).
This post has been edited by sarcasticidealist: