Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-04-26/Opinion

This opinion piece begins with a very controversial event. Jimmy Wales asked former ArbCom member Bradv if he was working with a paid editing group. ArbCom has declared that there was no basis for this question, that the evidence behind Wales's question was seriously flawed. The Signpost requested an interview with Bradv, but he declined and said that his statement on his usertalk page should be included in full. It is included below. – S

The last two weeks might have felt like the end of an era on Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales's seat on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees was never under threat, and he retains his symbolic "founder's flag". But following a request for arbitration filed against him, he resigned all his administrative and technical functions on Wikipedia. The only real power he will retain other than his Board seat is influence from the trust most Wikipedians have almost always placed in him. No administrator or Arbitration committee can take that power away. It's developed over more than 22 years, largely as the result of his practice of responding to almost any question – albeit sometimes with a long delay – on his talk page. But even that power has waned, over the years, as he has spent less time on Wikipedia. For example, the monthly pageviews for his talkpage (since 2015, when these numbers were first recorded) illustrate some of this decline in his interest and influence.

But something else happened as well. Seemingly unnoticed by the parties in this dispute, they agreed on a much bigger problem.