Jimbo blocks a user who made a stupid remarks about AIDS....last April....

Said editor is a former ED editor, but it seems that he's been pretty constructive lately....

An admin named Zscout disagrees with Jimbo and unblocks Miltopia and Mil then Jimbo desysops him and all hell breaks loose.

Our man on the scene JzG is there doing a battle for Jimmy, but the question has been asked : What is Jimbo's role in WP? How is it defined?

And this, my friends, is the beginning of the end for WP...

There are many kinds of revolutions. There are palace revolts that only a fool would get involved in. There are revolutions that want to make some people 3/5s a man. There are Beer Hall Putsches. There are Red Terrors that are followed by a Restoration. There are revolutions in which a god-king sends children into the countryside waving books of his quotations. And there are revolutions that transform and change everything. The question is "What kind of revolution?"

good question. I don't have the answer to that, but at least there are people asking questions here...

Well, so far the history of Wikipedia has roughly modeled the Russian Revolution. It's about time for Khrushchev now; anyone want to go find a boot to bang on tables?

Are we going to get to the bit where everything is sold off for a bag a beans and then have a goggle eyed former kgb man in charge?

Is Somey the equivalent of Tito?

This is petty drama. There will be a revolution when:

*Donations stop coming
*Most of the people adding content leave

Ok, but the time and money aren't simply going to dry up. They need someplace to go, some other place. CZ and VP aren't it, but nobody's offered a genuine alternative. Until they do, WP will continue on.

Al

Na...you wrong...it's 1929 on wikipeida and it's the time of Stalin...A time of chaos and death.

Wikpeida is in the time of Stalin 1929

King Jimbo makes a pronouncement :



Saying that you're never going to do something is always an extremely bad idea, because time usually proves you wrong.

However, it is this insistence on Civility that really makes me wonder about the whole agenda here.

It seems to me that Zscout has being entirely civil in unblocking Miltopia. And it also seems to me that Miltopia was not being uncivil when he was blocked, as far as I can see. To evoke something that happened months ago, for which he has already received a block, does not seem to be quite "on the level".

The real problem here is not being discussed. And I also think that the what we're seeing of anti-Jimbo comments are also not in view.

In any case, I've never seen Jimbo take so much time to try to put out these kind of flames...Is it because this is happening in the middle of the crucial fund-raising drive, which is supposed to finance the move to SF? Or is something else at work here?

In any case, this is not on the level at all....

I agree.

But that begs the analytical question...

Can we succinctly frame the real problem that lies at the core of these recurring WikiDramas?

I believe that it has to do with 1. the core agenda being inherently dishonest, and 2. with the fallacy that discussing knowledge has to be "civil" by definition. It certainly isn't that way in academia, let me tell you!

I suspect the "dishonesty" is closer to misconceptions and delusional beliefs than any intentional deception. Resolving popular misconceptions has rarely been a civil process, especially when those in power benefit from the perpetuation of central myths. One of the myths upon which Wikipedia rests is the largely unexamined belief in the efficacy and sanctity of rule-driven systems of regulation.

I'm not so sure about that; I think that this has more to do about money than it does about delusions. I think that Jimbo sees the money coming in from Wikia...and I think that if Wikipedia crashes, that might not be such an easy sale.

If dishonesty is involved, I vote for the "crass intention shyster" variety, as opposed to the "crazy idealist variety" here....