[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Matt Brown

Matt,

I will have to work my way through your comments bit by bit,
as my time on line will be very intermittent over the next
few days.

Matt Brown wrote:
> 
Rob: On 6/30/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > If the majority of editors on the page agree that the block quote
>  > is inappropriate, this is concensus.   If you disagree with this
>  > decision, you can initiate a discussion on the talk page, and
>  > ideally  these editors would discuss the issue with you.
>  >
MB: I'm still trying to sort out exactly what your complaints are,
> > so I don't want to accuse you of saying or advocating something
> > you are not saying, as I inadvertantly did regarding the 3RR.
> > So I have some questions:  What would have been the ideal outcome
> > in this case?  Do you think the editors should be forced to discuss
> > the issue with you before removing this block quote?  Do you think
> > consensus should not be used to guide decisions regarding Wikipedia
> > content?  If so, then what decision making process should replace it?

JA: I've been presenting the sequence of events in the Charles Peirce case
    roughly in the order that I actually experienced it.  People who want
    to skip ahead can look at the subsequent discussion on the talk page.

JA: A more savvy observer eventually raised the possibility of a sock puppet
    or meat puppet group.  I had heard only the first term before, and until
    this learning experience had always thought it was a rare phenomenon.

JA: Any savvy observer would, of course, naturally ask themselves:
    What was I doing at the age or two or three days in my WP life? --
    Was I deleting whole sections of established and documented text
    from articles?  Was I reporting other editors for 3RR violations
    on Admin NoticeBoards?  If you answer yes to these questions, then
    they will have to invent a whole new format of bold text for you.
    Moi?  I didn't even know about Admin NBs until I got pasted on one.

JA: I have agonized with conflicting feelings about this issue for a long time,
    and I still don't know for sure what to think about it, but here is how it
    sits with me at the moment.  I'm not sure I want to be a part of a project
    where Admins have the right to be checking what computer you are using
    at a given moment.  So I've decided that the puppet issue, although
    it was naturally mystifying at first and still distressing, is not
    the main problem.  The real problem is logically the same even if
    it's a bona fide group of 2 or 3 genuine, independent individuals
    who take a drop-of-the-hat straw poll and outvote an editor who
    may have spent a month adding a section to an article but who
    happens to be traveling that day, and who would at any rate
    be outvoted 2 or 3 to 1.

JA: The real problem is that a poll like the ones that are routinely taken in WP,
    despite all the written recommendations to do that only as a last resort,
    in no stretch of a normal person's imagination constitutes a "consensus"
    under the normal definition of the word, whether it's in an English,
    Legal, or Philosophical dictionary, or in conformity with any of
    the WP Policies that discuss consensus.  And people who imagine
    otherwise have simply not taken the trouble to look up the word
    in the relevant sources, or ignored what they read if they did.

JA: That is the problem here.

Jon Awbrey

> I hope I'm not putting words in Jon Awbrey's mouth by stating that he thinks
> the problem is that when consensus can be defined as "Me and three of my friends
> I IM'd to come and agree with me", there's a problem.  Especially when a "consensus"
> among like-minded people on the same side of an issue can be used to trump core
> Wikipedia policies and standard Wikipedia ways of working.
> 
> Part of the issue is that there's always tension between deciding an
> issue for good on the one hand, and having every single opinionated
> person coming along to any article being able to re-open things for
> which an adequate conclusion has already been reached.
> 
> Standard Wikipedia policy / practise here is that there are no
> permanent decisions on Wikipedia apart from core policy, but that if
> an issue has been decided by strong rough consensus, we're resistant
> to re-opening the issue unless the one wishing to re-open it can
> convince enough people that the previous rough consensus no longer
> holds.
> 
> "Strong rough consensus" in my opinion means an issue that for the
> vast majority of contributors has a result they can live with - even
> if not outright approve - and that has been reached after a
> satisfactory discussion, a satisfactory attempt at compromise, a
> respect for policy, and with sufficient editors involved that are
> representative on the issue.
> 
> IMO, a rough consensus is not a strong one, a good one, if it has been
> arrived at without discussion, without attempts to find common ground,
> without regard for over-riding policy, or without sufficient numbers
> of contributors or variety of points-of-view to be truly
> representative.
> 
> There are many editors on Wikipedia who want to truly do the right
> thing and achieve good results.  There are enough others, however, who
> want articles to say exactly what THEY wish them to say, and who will
> game the rules and do everything they can to get their way.   (There
> are probably other categories of editors, of course, but this is
> simplifying).
> 
> I have a feeling that another issue Jon has is that some contributors
> are too willing to remove things from articles if they don't like
> them, regardless of the work that went into them, the usefulness of
> the content, or in any way trying to achieve consensus for that
> removal.
> 
> Jon, do I have your positions right?
> 
> -Matt

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
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