[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

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JA = Jon Awbrey
MB = Matt Brown

MB: So I have some questions:

MB: 4. If so, then what decision making process should replace it?

JA: I think that editors should read the WP policies early and often
    and decide for themselves whether they really believe that's the
    way it ought to be done.  People who are used to the requirements
    of accurate, balanced reporting, and responsible scholarship find
    those principles already familiar, because that's the rules of the
    game that they've been living by all along.  Other people seem to
    read that stuff and go "yeah sure", then they go right back to the
    type of popularity contest of ideas that they are familiar with.
    Until the community embodies those principles as secind nature,
    it doesn't really matter whether they use Robot's Rules or just
    draw straws.

MB: 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.

JA: Yes, that's a good way to put it.

MB: 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.

JA: I have run into some pretty insistent 1-idea or 1-issue people in WP.
    In my experience folks like that are not really all that big a problem.
    Two sorts of things typically happen.  (1) You find some way to include
    a 1-liner in the article that accommodates their POV.  (2) Your have to
    be firm with them about the fact that bowing to their issue would violate
    a non-negotiable WP policy.  One of the reasons that these people are not
    that big a problem is that they are somewhat aware that their idea or their
    issue is an individual or minority position, and so you don't have to make
    them conscious of the fact that it ''is'' a POV.  The Really Big Problems,
    the so far just about insoluble problems in WP compliance come from people
    who have never had, or can't remember ever having had a different POV from
    the one they now have, or who have always been confluent with what happens
    to be the dominant "religion" (POV) in their parish.  These folks are not
    even aware that they have a POV, so they can't imagine how could it be
    anything but neutral, or how any other POV could even be regarded as
    rational.  So they have a divine duty to stamp out all diversity.

JA: In the comments from MB that follow, I am guesssing that he is
    talking only about policy pages, not the main body of articles.
    As far as content goes, that is, on pages that are not being
    watched by masses of observers all the time, the partisans
    of the "instant consensus" never check to see what kind
    of concensus may have preceded them.

MB: 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.

MB: "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.

MB: 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.

MB: 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).

MB: 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.

MB: Jon, do I have your positions right?

JA: The main thing will be whether the majority of editors understands the
    WP policies, and why the actual community practice departs so widely
    from the preaching.

JA: I will have to leave it at that.

Jon Awbrey

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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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