Photo: Flickr user lifeontheedge

Friday, March 23, 2007

MADNESS? THIS IS WIKIPEDIA!!

Wales as a constitutional monarch:

Jimbo's role looks like a horrible, poorly-defined mess, but looking at this through a constitutional history perspective, it seems fairly straightforward. Jimbo once exercised many functions, which are defined essentially by use: the functions that he had, such as arbitration, were the ones he exercised. These functions are now exercised by other functionaries, governed by their own policies, although Jimbo still has a potential to exercise them. Jimbo retains what are essentially reserve powers, to be used in extraordinary circumstances, while the day to day exercise of power is governed by the equivalent of a constitution (the arbitration policy, for example). Pressure from the community will serve well enough to force constitutional conventions on Jimbo's use of authority. As long as the conventions are not breached, everything's peachy.


If Wales is Betty, maybe Sanger was Diana? Or maybe Wales is the first Elizabeth, so Sanger's Oliver Cromwell. That would make Tim Berners-Lee Charlemagne and Lessig Churchill. Or maybe Wales is Churchill with war powers, Conservapedia is Tokugawa (see? that joke could have been a lot worse) and Disinfopedia is the swiss. Encyclopedia Dramatica gets to be Mussolini.

I think someone british needs to do this.

(Counterpoint: Wales is an emergent auctorial/paramount leader. I should probably also point that 300 sucks.)

6 comments:

llywrch said...

So where does Ward Cunningham, creator of the Wikiwiki software, fit into your pattern of analogies? Would he be Pericles?

I definitely hope the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetus was not the first name that came to mind.

Geoff

David Gerard said...

Let Uncyclopedia be Emperor Norton I.

Olly Onions said...

Wikipedia deletes itself after hoax entry http://ollysonions.blogspot.com/2007/03/wikipedia-deletes-itself-after-hoax.html

Ben Yates said...

Any byzantine emperor gets to be kelly martin.

Unknown said...

Actually, I'm proposing a form of leadership I've called auctorial/paramount that is related to emergent. Sorry for not being clear in my entry and not linking to the auctorial idea. (Now fixed.)

Ben Yates said...

(Sorry about this post being bumped to the top of Planet every time I update it. Blogger's fault, etc.)