On Nov 14, 2007 6:48 PM, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Six months later, the spoiler debate is still
carrying on with the
same half-dozen or so people vehemently opposing their removal. These
arguments have been presented in every forum imagineable - arbcom
twice, an RfC, several deletion debates, the mailing list, etc. The
number of remaining forums is growing so slim that people were, in all
seriousness, suggesting advertising the discussion on the watchlist
sitenotice alongside the arbcom elections. This is, obviously, beyond
the pale. Hopefully, the debate is now in its final throws as JzG has
deleted the spoiler template following a TfD. Obviously it's on DRV at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_November_14
(with a breathtakingly bad-faith assuming
nomination), but God
willing it will stay deleted and this discussion will finally end.
What interests me, though, is the question of how we can prevent this.
Need to have an editor-in-chief, or at least a committee, that is
willing and able to make decisions about such things. Arb com won't
do it. Jimbo usually won't do it. True consensus is generally
impossible to reach.
Whether or not "preventing this" is important enough to give up on
consensus is debatable; but I'd say the fact that some sort of
authority is required to "prevent this" is not.
Voting on issues like this is also a possibility, but there would
still need to be an authority to determine whether or not the vote
passed.
What is surprising in all of these cases is that
it has seemed, to me,
at least, that consensus formed for a position quite quickly - spoiler
tags were stupid, sourcing guidelines needed to have enough
flexibility to not break articles, and the 2004 election controversy
articles are abominations.
What do you consider a consensus? If unbanned users disagree with a
position and are willing to fight over its implementation, you don't
have a true consensus. Are all the people fighting against these
positions banned users? Or by "consensus" do you just mean
"significant majority"?
I actually disagree that there's consensus in the classical sense on
spoilers.
It's clear that more admins with bigger guns support their removal. But I
don't think that anyone ever achieved true "this is really bad" consensus
across any significant part of the project.
In a sense, "they brought bigger guns, and a bulk of the people didn't
bother to fire back at that point" is a consensus, but I don't think it's
the happy smiling agreement you were looking for.
I, for one, disagree that spoiler tags are a dumb thing. And I have admin
bit, and I could crank up a good argument over it here and elsewhere. I
decided it wasn't important enough to fight over, even though I believe the
arguments behind removing them are somewhere between specious and bogus.
If you intend to assert that nobody with influence and power supports the
existence of spoiler tags, I disagree politely. If you insist, I can
disagree loudly and robustly falsify the claim, but I'd rather just stand on
"you got away with it, but that's all."
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com