Voting at Wikipedia good, bad, neutral, necessary evil, unnecessary evil?
This came up yesterday, but I know it's not the first time.
I'm not proposing an answer -- but I do have some general thoughts on the
matter. I'm involved in a number of nonprofit organizations and they
operate in different manners -- and I use that experience as a basis for my
thoughts on this. Here are 3 basic ways they work:
A) Seek Consensus, But Vote: For example, most of the organizations have a
board of director that votes and uses majorities when necessary, but most
hesitate to accept a vote if it is close, and they prefer to achieve
something approaching consensus, but will accept a decision if there is a
large majority (this seems similar to Wikipedia).
B) Simply Vote: A few organizations use pure majority rule -- but this is
not very common in the organizations I'm involved in.
C) True Consensus: One organization I work with -- the American Friends
Service Committee (AFSC) is based on Quaker beliefs even though many of the
people involved are not Quakers -- and there we work completely on
consensus. Sometimes that means that it takes months or years to make a
decision, but that is OK at AFSC.
I definitely believe as a matter of principle that consensus is the best
way to operate, even if it can be slower. And I want to mention that with
Quakers and at AFSC, people are completely committed to consensus -- and
that means that people also know that it is a very big thing to block
consensus. So for someone to block consensus, they must believe that it is
extremely important -- for example, something that is opposed to the
overall purpose of the organization (at AFSC) or to the spirit of the
meeting (among Quakers and "meeting" can be read as "congregation").
It is
very unusual for someone to block consensus, because people realize that
the process is as important as the decision in many ways -- both for the
specific issue at hand and for the organization or the meeting in general.
So it might not be too easy with so many Wikipedians who like to argue
about *everything* ;-)
So I am still ruminating about what I think is the best way for Wikipedia
to function, because it is difficult to pin down *only one way* -- or even
two or three that Wikipedia approaches decisions and conflicts, and
therefore come to a conclusion about the best way to decide things. It
seems that people prefer to have rules -- or at least to have guidelines --
to decide what is acceptable and unacceptable (I do as well). However, this
is a positive feedback loop for those people (who will make more and more
rules), and but will also drive away people with other focuses or
personality types in a negative feedback loop (see
<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points/>). But as the
project continues to increase in size and scope, and as more types of
people join, it is not as clear what is the best way to proceed.
Primarily, I think that we need to think about the concept of voting and
how it affects group processes. Wikipedia is an unusual hybrid of Wiki,
NPOV, *and* altruistic self-interest (i.e., we all get some satisfaction
from what we do here, but we also do it for the good of the
project/community/world). I also think we need to look at how our
decision-making processes affect how much we are open or closed -- we can
be "open" to everybody, but if only one type of person can handle being a
contributor or editor, what does that really mean for us.
Anyway, I have been reflecting a little bit about what I should focus my
energy on -- and it seems like I should be writing articles and *not*
checking Votes for deletion fifteen times each day. But I also feel that it
is important to pay attention to the housekeeping work also, and that often
takes me back to VfD and to Recent Changes. But I do think that we can
bring something positive to articles and be NPOV -- but I find it hard to
decide the balance between *contributing* and *housekeeping*.
And here's one more good link to check out:
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle>. I think we might be
somewhere near 17 (Wiki:DeclineOfCivility -- there are more strangers than
friends, and AssumeGoodFaith fails as reputation is fleeting) and 18
(arrival of the PoliceForces)
Anyway, that what I'm thinking today -- but tomorrow it may all change ;+)>
Brian
At 27 Oct 2003 17:50:32 -0800 (PST), Anthere wrote:
Someone wrote me offline, to ask me what I thought of
voting, because he noticed I rather rarely did, in
particular very rarely on vfd. He pointed out that
mail from Ec and TC to me.