On 16/10/2007, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com> wrote:
An outstanding feature of on-line communities is that there are
relatively few enforcement mechanisms, and thus relatively higher
levels of anarchy. Back in the glory days of Usenet, people
often asked, "What am I allowed to post?", and my answer was
always, "You can post whatever you can get away with."
And much the same applies to Wikipedia.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We even enshrine the notion,
in a way, by having an actual policy saying it's okay to Ignore
All Rules.
The point is that such a modus operandi isn't what WP:Consensus alleges -
even though that document is indeed pretty weaselly with concepts of
consensus and explaining how things allegedly work on Wikipedia.
I'm not particularly in favour of operating by proper consensus - I don't
think that it would be very workable, but I would like at the very least to
see groundrules for the "whatever you can get away with" system (i.e. how
things really work most of the time on Wikipedia) that ensure a more level
playing field - i.e. the winners are not just the most persistent or
enthusiastic or the most supporters (yes, as you say, they aren't
necessarily the "winners" if the minority are more persistent).
Zoney
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