Jimbo-
Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu
mbers)
This page is a very good example of what's wrong
with voting, as
opposed to a more complex and subtle process of seeking general
consensus.
It is obvious that there is not going to be consensus for or against using
a particular date style. Maybe there is going to be pseudoconsensus for a
particular compromise solution, but that does not necessarily mean that's
a good one. For example, the solution most likely to be more or less
acceptable to most contributors in terms of date style is "Do what you
want". It is only a relatively small number of contributors who fight for
consistency. But consistency is important for professionality.
But I agree with you that the voting method used here was flawed, as have
been all methods used in the past. We've been over this: If you want to
make a decision, you should
1) Announce the upcoming discussion/vote in a prominent place, depending
on its potential impact.
2) Have a discussion period -- length again depending on the impact of any
decision. (In the case of date styles, the impact is pretty big, as a bot
has to go over thousands of articles.) Try to find consensus if possible.
3) Refactor the discussion, sort out options and advantages/disadvantages
of each one.
4) Depending on the type of decision, choose a voting method (fptp or
approval), e.g. yes/no works better with fptp because it's simpler.
5) Require everyone who votes, by an "unenforcable policy", to read the
arguments for and against each option.
6) Vote. Depending on the decision impact, a certain minimum number of
votes needs to be gathered before a decision is made.
There was no clear discussion/vote separation here, no defined period or
minimum number of votes. The whole thing was not initially announced and
only came to my attention through the mailing list. The voting method used
was a very primitive form of approval voting that allows for all kinds of
clever manipulation.
All this is the result of the fact that we still have no official decision
making process that works. People come up with very basic, simplistic
voting solution because they are at least likely to get us somewhere,
unlike the pseudoconsensus process that almost never works. It is now
generally recognized that you are the benevolent dictator, Jimbo, and that
is the decision making process we use most of the time we actually get
something controversial done.
The examples you like to uphold to refute this are examples where
consensus is blindingly obvious anyway -- nobody but the most annoying
crank would argue that an encyclopedia should not strive to be neutral and
rely on verifiable sources, for example. On Votes for deletion, nobody
would argue that a page containing "jjalosdfjlkö HELLO WORLD" should not
be deleted. But on VfD, pages often linger for months because a single
person has expressed doubts -- sysops then eventually make often arbitrary
decisions. With a real process, we would just try to see where most (in
the case of deleting, 80-90%) people stand, and then make a quick
decision.
When there is real controversy, consensus usually becomes impossible. We
need to either formalize voting, or rely on your great-but-not-infinite
wisdom whenever that happens.
Regards,
Erik