Off of Jimbo's talkpage :



To which Jimbo responds :



To which Thatcher replies :



To which Giano replies :


So, the proverbial can of worms has been opened.

Is Jimbo a constitutional monarch? What does this phrase "Elder of our community" (at 44??? an Elder???) mean? And exactly what power does he have off of English WP?

Me thinks that his initial statement was a rather huge mistake....

Nobody knows what powers Jimbo has in English Wikipedia, and nobody is anxious to find out.

Cheez Whiz!? R U Like Totally Illiterate!?

Here's A Clue 4 U …

Jon

The other thread relating to appointments 'by fiat' to arbcom also covers a lot of this territory - maybe it'd be a good idea to make them into two specific clearly defined threads or to merge them.

Actually, since the subject is "What is Jimbo's role outside of EN:WP?" and "what the heck does he mean by "constitutional monarch?", I would strongly suggest not merging these subjects.

This is, to put it mildly, a smoking gun on any number of levels.

Technically and enforcement-wise, no more than any other board member of the WMF does. This has already been tested by the English Wikinews, who has a pretty standard and routine "desysop inactive admins" policy by a simple up and down vote. Jimmy had never apparently even used his admin bit there (that he never got via RFA anyway--I think Erik Moeller just went and gave it to him).

The English News community desysopped him, which got lots of press in IT news circles. Few people remember it already since IT news in general makes the news cycle of regular mainstream media look glacial in comparison. Jimmy then did an "admin alert" posting on News, saying they had to give the bit back to him, he needs it to review deleted revisions for WMF business, etc., and the News community shoved back, saying "Stand for RFA, then. No free passes," basically, and Jimmy dropped the subject and never posted there again to my knowledge.

He then tried to do the infamous "all board members should have sysop" argument, which got nowhere fast.

Outside of English Wikipedia, he's just a standard board member, so far, and that's already been tested, for what its worth.

Playing Devil's advocate here, I think that on French WP his views would be seen as that of a constitutional monarch which should be considered, but which may be ignored if one can justify that by practice or law.

The point that Giano makes (and this is where it gets sticky) is that on EN:WP, Jimbo is not a constitutional monarch. He acts as an absolute monarch, desysoping and appointing ARB-COM members as he sees fit.

So, if he is defining himself as a constitutional monarch on EN:WP, doesn't that effectively limit his powers far beyond what he has demonstrated up to this point?

This whole thing is really ill considered...but it's all there in black and white.

What it implies is, quite frankly, the end of EN:WP as we know it....

Did he intend on doing this?

Relevant links:

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?limit=5...&year=&month=-1

Reinstatement request:

http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=W...Jimbo.27s_Admin



Jimmy said:



But Anthere had already said:



Brian then shuts it down, basically, being that he is apparently to Wikinews as Jimmy is to en.wikipedia, and as Cary is to Commons:



It's also pointed out in that discussion that Jimmy was also deadminned on Wikibooks, see here.

Jimmy never again posted to Wikinews, since then.

What power would it take to remove Jimbo's power to desysop? I guess the easiest way would be for a dev to just change his password. Take note, any "group of admins seeking to defy the ArbCom".

Jimbo can desysop anybody he likes. Following which the WMF board can go right back ahead and resysop them.

This would appear a simple legal situation. And legalities mean "who controls the guards posted at the door of the place where the servers are," in case anybody wants to get physically ugly.

WMF is a 501-c-3 corporation. All power is vested in its board of directors. Jimbo holds no power except as one of those directors, where he can easily be outvoted. Those directors direct the programmers also. They therefore control all passwords and computer administrative power.

All "cyberspace wizard powers" are just so much fluff. Arbcom gets its wikipowers from the WMF board, and so does anything else to do anything on any wiki hosted by the WMF. These can all be removed. As can any silly cyberpowers on any WP project. It might take a bit of time and votes to change various bylaws to get stuff done to make this so, but ultimately the board, siting in meatspace, can make anything happen in cyberspace that it wants to. Change arbcom, disband arbcom, whatever. Take away every administrative and beaurocratic bit and give them to anybody or nobody.

Maybe somebody should tack this up where the WMF board members can read it. At the moment they seem to be like a jury which doesn't realize that once the case is handed to them, they can do absolutely anything they like in terms of saying "guilty" or "not guilty", and need offer no explanations for it to anybody. Not the judge, not the newspapers, nobody.

WMF BOARD NULLIFICATION
(Of Imaginary Cyberpowers)

We need Tee-shirts.

They could, but they wouldn't.

The theoretical question needs to be asked is the Wikimedia foundation and the Wikipedia community the same thing? What if say the WR foundation was formed, leased some servers and set up a wiki. What if the community decided to stop all further work on the Wikimedia foundation website, copied all content and continued all further work on the WR foundation website?

It is not uncommon in the open source community for a project to decide to move to a different hosting company.

Is the Wikimedia foundation anything other than a web hosting company?

It's a web hosting company that owns a (very important) trademark. If somebody else took the whole thing over, they'd have to rename it.

Fundamentally, that's what they are. It's about the only thing they manage to do at all competently, out of all the things they try to do.

More importantly, they own the domain name, and therefore all the incoming links and search engine results. So it'd take a huge support among the community to be successful.

Anyway, if the community forked, who would the WMF sue for trademark infringement? The new web hosting company would be protected if it's really just a web hosting company. The WMF would have to sue each individual community member, an impossible task, and failure to do so would mean the trademark would be lost to genericide.

When "Wikipedia" was first registered I thought about challenging it, on the basis that it was properly owned by the community, and not the foundation. But it's probably too late for that at this point.

I think a better goal for the community would be to take the hosting company out of the loop completely, and move Wikipedia to a peer-to-peer system.

That's amusing. He apparently wanted sysophood as a status symbol, even though numerous RFA votes claim it's not supposed to be one.

What everyone is missing, is the power pof the people. Sure the board can do anything they want, but they won't have an encyclopedia to run anymore if they do anything that pisses off the majority of the community - a big up and leave by most of the active admins is going to give vandals free reign - the only thing to do then is lock the whole thing down. Yes they can do what they like but they won't because anything that pisses off the volunteer community will have disastrous effects - including widespread media coverage.

...or make RFA standards not be retarded. Or do simply things like split up admin powers into simply progressing tiers, like they did rollback...

Do the board ever do anything other than what Jimbo wants, though?

If the community wants to gain control they can do it through control of the money. Wikipedia editors contribute a huge amount of money to the foundation and sufficient money to run a bare bones Wikipedia. The donate button on Wikipedia pages could be changed to go to a new bank account. The community could then decide to forward this money to the foundation only when the foundation does what the community wants.

Kings have been controlled through Parliament's right to raise taxes.

No, that is controlled by the developers, not by the admins, and the developers are firmly under the control of the WMF.

Wasn't the Wikinews community all upset about not getting support they needed from the foundation? If so, they can surely get over that pipe dream now.

As far as splitting up admin powers, I had this discussion with the_undertow. I think there should be two types of admins. Content and behavioral. This would decrease admin abuse and make it easier to promote admins. Content administrators would have access to the delete and protect buttons. Behavioral administrators would deal with blocks, mediation and mentorship.

Another class of administrator isn't needed. If anything, admins need to worry less about behavior and more about content. The whole project needs to emphasis content; it should be driving every decision and it should be at the very center of the project's culture. Instead, Wikipedia's culture makes places for morons who can't write their way out of a hole in the ground and wouldn't try anyway. That whole angle of the project should be encouraged to leave, not grow.

Tha could work. One looks at content, the other at the people creating it.

One could compare WP to the military. Since they aren't fighting a war but simply building stuff and maintaining it, you really only need two classes of people in authority: military specialists and military police. Volunteers are to be directed by the specialists, and only policed if they do something really grossly out of line. Officers, most of you are dismissed; rank was getting to your heads anyway.

That's a very good way of looking at it. Some admins would fight tooth and nail to prevent such a change. Personally, I'd happily be a content administrator and drop the block button. And there are obviously a lot of admins that should be forced to drop the block button.

My initial reaction was that this is a brilliant idea, but on further reflection I don't think these categories will suffice. Vandalism admins, for example, need trivial access to both categories (that is, blocking vandal/ip accounts and deleting vandalism pages and redirects), and half the admins seem to be minted on the strength of their vandalism fighting.

What if we carved out (1) the ability to block non-autoconfirmed accounts (that is, those with less than 3 days and ten edits, or whatever), (2) the ability to block IPs for at up to 24 hours, and (3) the ability to delete pages that have been in existence for less than 24 hours or with less than ten or so edits, as with deleting redirects (but not to restore pages them or look at deleted edits). That would be a sort of base level admin. That should be all the rights that vandal fighters need, and I think these rights are not too potentially disruptive and could be given out somewhat liberally--maybe even without anything like an RFA. From there you could build up other classes of admin, but I think these few select rights would cover the vast majority of administrative acts on the site--judging from the delete and block logs, anyway.

Doing high-drama, high-power things like protecting a page, deleting an old article, or blocking an established user would require the additional "content" or "behavior" designation.

This is all ridiculous. Jimbo should be able to read all the deleted articles on every WMF project. He needs to be able to do his job.

I'm an absolute monarch.

Yes, but isn't that the whole point of this discussion?

I mean, what IS Jimbo's job? If he's like the Queen and his job is shaking hands and giving consensual speeches....well, he doesn't need any administrative power to do any of those things. He himself defines his role as "constitutional monarch"....but that implies that there is a constitution, doesn't it?

Well, where is it? Is this constitution with the community, or with the board? And what does this imply?

I am struck by a situation I remember where the Catholic Belgium King was in a position where the parliament had voted a law legalizing abortions and as he was king, he was required to sign it: something that he couldn't do in good conscious. The legal solution which the Belgium government found was for the King to abdicate during the exact time necessary for the law to be signed by someone else, and then once that was done, the abdication was refused and the King resumed his reign.

Would Jimbo do that if the community voted a measure that Jimbo couldn't accept? Would he do that if the board did this?

This is a very interesting discussion indeed.

At the end of the day, Jimbo has the unique status of "Founder", which means he has Steward powers on all WMF sites but unlike other Stewards cannot be thrown out at annual reconfirmation. In theory, any steward, indeed any bureaucrat or admin where appropriate, could wheel-war with him. The question is whether they could get away with it.

If the community voted on the matter, which option would they pick:

1) Jimbo as a "constitutional monarch" who is actually all-powerful and prepared to actively intervene in situations, imposing unilateral solutions and overruling or ignoring the community

2) Jimbo as a "constitutional monarch" in the genuine sense of the word: no power

3) Jimbo with no special status at all

I'd vote for option 3, but I think option 2 would also be acceptable. This fiction of "constitutional monarchy" as it stands (option 1) is totally unacceptable, though; it has been damaging the project and inhibiting the community for a long time. I don't believe for a minute that the community would endorse option 1, and things are as they are not because of some venerable tradition of universal respect but because of Jimbo's use of power and threats. This "constitutional monarch" says he will personally desysop anyone who "defies" the ArbCom, a body that he ultimately controls--and he has that control not because the community gave it to him but because he gave it to himself. Something that is imposed and preserved by fiat cannot be a legitimate tradition, and it is an insult to the community's intelligence for Jimbo to present it that way.

What surprised me in that Wikinews discussion was the number of kool aid drinkers (so I thought) who were speaking in favour of Jimbo not having adminship. My initial thought was that something like that would never be possible on ENWP but maybe, just maybe, if it's ever necessary...

I'd dispute the definition that Giano gave and that people seem to be running with here - a constitutional monarchy just means that the monarch's powers are well-defined and limited - not that they do not exist at all. The Queen of England is a constitutional monarch despite having the power (and actually having done so in Australia, though via the governor-general rather than directly, in 1975 - it's not been done in the Queen's lifetime in Britain, but it was still a constitutional monarchy in 1834) to unilaterally dismiss the government.

You may well be right, historically, but in the 21st century, in the western world (that which Wikipedia and Jimbo inhabits) it is accepted that the role of a constitutional monarch is to preside benignly, "officially" appoint without personal preference only those democratically elected. To advise, but not command, their governments privately and publicly express no personal opinion on any subject. Except in a state of national emergency or crisis. I think Jimbo was mistaken to use the term constitutional monarchy, as it was not really what he had in mind. I suspect he wants the glamour and prestige of a nice smiley monarch and the power of an autocrat, he won't find it easy to combine the two.

Giano

Probably closer to a Prostitutional Monarch.

Way Out Here, we call that a Pimp.

Jon

He's running a top ten website. His job is to keep content coming in.

If I were Jimbo, I'd be amazed at the bizarre levels of idiocy that the people who play on his websites are capable of generating. ArbCom, RfA's, RfC's. Discussions about whether he is the queen of England or the czar of Russia.

It's all about Section 230. He cares about Wikipedia and wants it to go in a direction that he likes, but he has to interfere in a way that can't be described as publishing the content himself. He'll only go as far as his lawyers let him.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think that dismissing the occasional rogue admin here and there is no problem. Same with occasionally starting over with a new ArbCom. Just say they were allowing disruption, and interfering with people's ability to use the site productively.

Screw what the "community" thinks. You could lose half those busybodies and the place will probably run more efficiently.

If you retain ultimate editorial control of content (which WMF certainly does) I cannot fail to see how that makes you not a "publisher". If I write a book for Knopf, they don't generate its content--that comes from me, the writer. But this doesn't get them out of responsiblity for being the publisher. In the electronic world, the courts intended to get BBS providers off the hook for stuff that was duplicated and distributed too fast for any editorial control. But sec 230 ended up letting every e-publisher off the hook for any publishing activity at all, so far as I can see. Basically, the courts have held that an e-publisher avoids all publishing responsibilties, so long as they aren't a writer . Well, of course a publisher isn't normally a writer. When were they EVER?

OK - let me ask you a question.

Suppose you want to, as a matter of public policy, allow places where "stuff that is duplicated and distributed too fast for any editorial control" (and wiki edits certainly are duplicated and distributed far faster than any content on any modem-era BBS) to exist. Some would say you'd be crazy to want this (clearly those people also think the BBSes section 230 was originally set up to protect ought to be shut down as well). But, given that the apparent policy aim behind section 230 applies just as well to any forum or wiki today as it did to any BBS or newsgroup back then, there's no reason it shouldn't apply to wikipedia. So what do you do?

The problem with 230 does NOT lie in the fact that it applies to wikipedia. The problem is that it errs too far in the direction of allowing the "publisher" to get away with everything, period. To put them on the hook just because there is some after-the-fact editorial action is not the answer either - would you prefer a wikipedia where just as much libelous content gets posted and none of it is ever deleted? I think the key lies in requiring the 'publisher' (or service provider if you prefer) to use their after-the-fact editorial abilities responsibly - NOT in forcing them to choose between accepting liability vs not using it at all, because they will choose the latter every time.

Well, you have to decide if you want to allow unmoderated BBS or USENET or Chat stuff to exist. Since it's like a giant telephone party-line where defamation can spread too fast to contain, and also can be generated too fast and too anonymously to identify the perpetrators.

But that's been going on for some time. I think the default decision has been to hold publishers of known quality control and known content-scutiny, to higher standards. Partly because defamation (damaging untruths to personal reputations) published by the New York Times or the Washington Post turns out to be more damaging than rumors at cocktail parties, USENET, or stuff on somebody's BBS, for just those reasons. Of course, print media have had to get the counts to protect them with a "malice" clause, but that can be generally overridden in eggregious cases and cases where fair warning of a problem has been given, and ignored.

No argument. Though I'm not sure that e-versions of the NY Times or People Magazine would be allowed to get away with what Wikipedia is. People see them as clearly publishers, and therefore subject to publisher standards, even in the e-format. Sec 230, as the courts have been interpreting it, would seem to take down even that.



That might be one answer, actually. Then it can be clearly seen as the work of some nut at a cocktail party, without any stamp of having been reviewed by many pairs of eyes, many of which have been given (delegated) editorial powers by the owner of the publication medium (newspaper, TV show, magazine). Which is, of course, the case with much of the content on WP which is older than a few minutes (I'll give them credit for the minutes).



Well, then, let them. But if you choose to accept no liability, you then get no editorial control on content-- you have to disseminate content as generated by others, as is. As soon as your letters to the editor page starts editing the letters you get, then you're a publisher and anything you let on there which is outrageous, you ought to take some heat for.

Wikipedia would not choose "no liability" (no responsibility) if it meant having no power over content at any point. If you filed suit against WP to force them to publish the content YOU personally wanted added to an article, they'd make all kinds of horrible noises about their absolute right to publish what they like, on their own private site. And that you, as a person not having a seat on the private WMF board, get no ultimate say at all about what's on the encyclopedia. They'd claim private publisher's rights with a vengeance.

But right after that, if you tried to hold the WMF board responsible for something bad on the enclyclopedia which has been there for months of review, and after much complaining, they'd ultimately deny having any responsiblity for it at all, and deny being a publisher like Random House. Saying they're just a hosting service under sec 230, with content they host provided by anybody who wants to put it up.

What we really need is two of these suits from either side going on simultaneously, in the same courtroom, in front of the same judge. Otherwise they get to play both ends against the middle forever.

I confess I had a little trouble following your "reasoning", but …

OK — let me ask you a question.

Suppose you want, as a matter of public policy, to allow places where "toxic waste sludge on medical waste buns — that is generated and distributed too fast and too massively for the USDA and any number of State and Municipal Health Departments to keep up with" can be marketed as Slap-Happy Meals™ to Your Unsuspecting Citizenry (YUC) … So how do you ensure the "rights" of anyone to do that who wannas?

Jon

clearly you do not (not that I needed to be told) agree with the policy aim that led to section 230. My question was how best to minimize harmful side effects while still accomplishing what they had in mind; it's already fairly clear to me where people stand on the worthiness of the aim itself.

How do you reduce the harm done by wikipedia without eliminating forums, BBSes, usenet, etc? Perhaps you are content to eliminate those things, but that's not really the question I asked.

Of course, constitutional monarchs normally have power on paper--but they don't actually use it, and in practical terms they can't use it. To be a constitutional monarch, as a matter of common understanding, means to be a symbolic figurehead without any real power, and if that's what Jimbo wants to call himself, that's what he ought to become.

Please try to understand, people who have spent their entire post-adolescent lives advocating for the Fullest Reasonable Exercise (FRE) of Academic Freedom, Free Inquiry, and Free Speech well grok the motivations underlying that current bit of legislative ragitude.

So please put that little worry out of your mind …

That brings us to the Big Worry that all of us who share these aims ought to be worrying over right now — but that apparently only the proportion of us with sufficiently extended post-adolescent lives apparently see far enough ahead to see …

Apparently …

Back later, I have to go do the dishes now …

Jon

Where in Section 230, or any of the case law surrounding it, does it limit the way Jimbo can interfere with Wikipedia without being treated as a publisher?

I'll give you a hint. Nowhere. Your interpretation of Section 230 is completely at odds with the text of the law, with the intent of the law, and with the case law surrounding the law.

The whole point of Section 230 was to allow and encourage service providers to interfere (by legislatively overturning Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co.).



It's legal fiction. Section 230 doesn't say that service providers aren't publishers, it says they won't be treated as publishers.



(Getting back on topic...) Last I checked, that was the job of Sue Gardner, not Jimmy Wales.

Interesting viewpoint. Care to explain further?

Did you read the link to the Wikipedia article on Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co. (unfortunately, you have to add a period at the end of the URL, the editor keeps removing it)? Specifically, the last paragraph:



Under the precedent set in Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co., an ISP was unable to censor grossly inappropriate content without finding themselves then liable for everything. Section 230 allowed them to do that, allowed them to "interfere", without being held liable for everything.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer an appeal to authority, Mike Godwin even agreed with me "that the whole point of Section 230 of the CDA was to allow service providers to engage in direct removal of project content without becoming liable for that which it failed to remove.", responding "That's a correct reading of the reasoning behind Sec. 230." It's ironic, because the people threatening the WMF with losing their protections under Section 230 are causing the WMF to be less involved in cleaning up the messes, not more.

The biggest problem with Section 230, IMO, is that there's no takedown provision, a la the DMCA.

Interesting: If I understand you correctly, if we were to lobby the US congress to add a "takedown provision", then this would change the way that Section 230 is applied?

Could you clarify please?

So what about Wikipedia Review? Should it not exist? Should it be moderated, so that every edit gets reviewed by the owner before it can be published? Should the admins never delete anything, no matter how outrageously libelous it is? Should the owner of the site be legally responsible for everything that any idiot ever says?

The way the DMCA works is you only get protection if you follow the takedown provisions. The way the takedown provisions work, the victim of the copyright infringement notifies the ISP that their copyright is being infringed. Then, within a certain period of time, the ISP has to remove the content, unless the contributor gives his/her real name and address to the alleged victim. If the contributor does this, the alleged victim then has a certain period of time to sue the contributor or to drop the whole thing.

Substitute copyright infringement for libel, and this would at least be an improvement on the current Section 230 protection. As Mike Godwin (or was it Brad Patrick?) was quick to point out to Gregory Kohs when Kohs alleged being libeled, Section 230 has no takedown provision. So even if the WMF knows that there is libel on their site (under this theory), they are under no legal obligation to remove it, and are still protected under Section 230. Under the most liberal of interpretations, which seem to be what the courts are going with, the libel can stay on the site forever, and the victim has no legal recourse except against the original contributor. I wonder what happens if the original contributor dies. Under the crazy interpretation of Section 230 which has so far held up in court, any Internet user (Section 230 covers both providers and users of an interactive computer service) could repeat the libel anywhere and there's nothing the victim could do about it.

Such a provision would, for example, require them to remove problematic content after being notified (right now they don't have any obligation to do so)

Ok well you've established that Jimbo is safe to interfere if he is removing offensive content, but that seems more to me like F-bombs and pictures of boobies. Where do you draw the line?

Suppose an anonymous IP starts an article that says, say, that Greg Kohs has beaver teeth, thus destroying his career as a tooth model costing him thousands of dollars. Someone tries to erase the statement, but then an administrator reverts him and full protects the article. Another administrator unprotects it, but the first administrator reprotects it, and the ArbCom agrees that the article should be full protected. A third administrator defies the ArbCom and unprotects the article. Jimbo desysops him. The article contains this statement forever, because any administrator who wants to unprotect knows that if he does so, he'll be desysopped by Jimbo. Every time Greg googles his own name, the first hit is going to lead to a story about on Wikipedia about his teeth. Is this the spirit of Section 230?