Jimbo causes Blofeld to quit Options

[thekohser]

I don't know why so many "long-time editors" seem very surprised and indignant to discover that Jimmy Wales is a horrible manager of communities, and that he's basking in success and fame on the thankless labor served up by grunts who don't realize that Jimmy Wales keeps the architecture deliberately labor-intensive, because it's so addictive.

Good luck on the "outside", Blofeld!

[The Adversary]

A few notes:
To Blofeldt: Of course Jimbo has nothing but contempt for Blo´s contribution.....but then Jimbo has nothing but contempt for any of us suckers who works for free (for him, he hopes). I thought that had been quite obvious for years?

And the question at hand: I, for one, was completely dumbfounded by the ...the...., let us say "shortness of vision" that Gardner showed in her now infamous and much repeated statements about lack of women in wikipedia. (But, that maybe because I am not very interested in the articles about Jimmy Choo & Manolo Blahnik. Or even their shoes.)

Being female, and contributing in the Israel/Palestine-area....where Wikipedia has a reputation of matching Göring and Goebbels output of hate and propaganda (hi, Goodwin!)....is a slightly more troublesome aspect, I would have thought. And the same problem is present in several other areas. And Jimbo just doesn´t get it.

(And I´ll leave Gardner´s total over-sell of her own "achievements" on wikipedia: just a typical "climber" self-promotion that few would have reacted against if she had been a man )

Ah, but the pair of Gardner and Jimbo: where did you ever see such a fine pair of intellectual .. pygmies?

There is some good stuff on wp, (to quote Leonard Cohen: there are flowers on the garbage-heap), but apparently the current leadership does not see any need to weed out the garbage. And with their self-serving attitude, I do not expect much from them in the future.

The only solution, I think -sometime- in the future, someone else will develop the idea of online encyclopedia...hopefully taking the "good" stuff from wp.

That would leave wikipedia behind; sort of letting wikipedia be to online encyclopedia what altavista has become to online search engines: "the great new thing" one day.... totally forgotten 15 years after.

(Note to self: spend more time on licensing-issues.)

PS: I could say a lot about Blofeldt...but since this thread is about Jimbo (Thanks, Greg)..I´ll leave it for now.

[Milton Roe]

(And I´ll leave Gardner´s total over-sell of her own "achievements" on wikipedia: just a typical "climber" self-promotion that few would have reacted against if she had been a man )

Have to disagree, there. Resume-padding may be common, but any male-dominated or technical organization has a way around it. There's a bull session, and it doesn't involve how many women you've slept with (or how many grandchildren you have). It's to find out if you can be trusted to hold up your end. So inquiry is made to see if you speak the lingo, how many base jumps you have, how many logged dives, how many hours of flying time and in what sorts of aircraft, what weapons have you qualified with, what is your batting average, how many class 5 climbs have you done, and where, did you ever lead anything above 5.1, and so on. Whatever the honest metric of competence is, in the task at hand. In this world-- the world of competence-driven authority, not formal organization-assigned authority-- Sue wouldn't last 10 minutes before being pegged as a poseur.

Does all of this correspond with "formal rank" in human organizations? No, indeed! The biggest friction in any organization is the basic friction between people who have the assigned authority to tell others what to do, and those people who SHOULD have it, by way of competence and experience. Wikipedia has not solved this problem, either. However, most volunteer organizations and recreational organizations (especially those involving dangerous activities like climbing, diving, etc) do a far better job of solving it than Wikipedia has (and indeed, than WMF has).

[The Adversary]

(And I´ll leave Gardner´s total over-sell of her own "achievements" on wikipedia: just a typical "climber" self-promotion that few would have reacted against if she had been a man )

Have to disagree, there. Resume-padding may be common, but any male-dominated or technical organization has a way around it. There's a bull session, and it doesn't involve how many women you've slept with (or how many grandchildren you have). It's to find out if you can be trusted to hold up your end. So inquiry is made to see if you speak the lingo, how many base jumps you have, how many logged dives, how many hours of flying time and in what sorts of aircraft, what weapons have you qualified with, what is your batting average, how many class 5 climbs have you done, and where, did you ever lead anything above 5.1, and so on. Whatever the honest metric of competence is, in the task at hand. In this world-- the world of competence-driven authority, not formal organization-assigned authority-- Sue wouldn't last 10 minutes before being pegged as a poseur.

Does all of this correspond with "formal rank" in human organizations? No, indeed! The biggest friction in any organization is the basic friction between people who have the assigned authority to tell others what to do, and those people who SHOULD have it, by way of competence and experience. Wikipedia has not solved this problem, either. However, most volunteer organizations and recreational organizations (especially those involving dangerous activities like climbing, diving, etc) do a far better job of solving it than Wikipedia has.

Are we not talking about two different things, here?
One is the internal "pecking-order" in an organization. Wikipedia equivalent of # of base jumps or logged dives is to ask how many DYK, FA, and FAs have you achieved, your edit-count, your articles created, your barnstars, block-record (or lack of it), bla, bla bla.
(And yeah; much can be said of the merit, or lack of it, of these "measurements", but, as this Blofeld -case shows: all the "normal" wikipedia "measurements" counts for absolutely nothing if you do not kiss the behind of The Great Leader.)

However, another thing is the "spin" presented to the "outside"...which is what Gardner is/was guilty of. Note the forum: she isn´t presenting herself as a great editor inside the organization...that would be too stupid. No, she is presenting her spin to the (gullible) outsiders (read: newspapers).

Which is, to me, completely unsurprising.

Now; what is more interesting is that her lack of logged dives wikipedia-edits, and/or a lack of ...shall we say, "intellectual stature", gives her such a shallow insight into fundamental problems of wikipedia. But that is something she shares with Jimbo.

Which is, to me, far more astonishing.