[WikiEN-l] Civility poll results

[Emily Monroe]

> Consensus process can be tedious in person, where the communication  
> bandwidth is far higher than mere text, we have tone of voice,  
> pauses, body language (which is highly efficient compared to text at  
> communicating intention).

If anyone of you have attended a Quaker "worship meeting with emphasis  
on business", you'll understand just how true the above statement is.  
There's a joke online that it takes the whole meeting and 3-8 months  
for Quakers' to change a lightbulb. After all, they have to refer the  
"issue" to multiple committees, and the oldest member *just has* to  
break consensus right before the lightbulb is going to be changed, and  
then have to go to the hospital before the next business meeting.

But in all honesty, think about it. Can you imagine trying to  
comprehend consensus and improve Wikipedia *at the same time* if  
you've never experienced consensus in your lifetime?

Emily
On Aug 12, 2009, at 7:04 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> At 09:59 PM 8/11/2009, FT2 wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Marc Riddell
>> <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>wrote:
>>
>>> Any solution to this problem should start with the simple  
>>> question: How do
>>> you treat another human being?
>>>
>>
>> The biggest clue isn't some "civility" standard - it's when some  
>> user says
>> "please talk about the issues, actions, and evidence, rather than
>> insinuations and ad hominen". Any user should have that right.
>
> The problem with this is that the protest is itself ad hominem.
> "Insinuations" is a complex negative judgment about the *intention*
> of another.
>
> I've seen practically a direct quote of the above in a discussion
> where it was the "issues, actions, and evidence" that were discussed
> by the other editor, as far as I could tell. The statement is an
> insinuation that the other editor was *not* behaving properly.
>
> We have open discussion, self-regulated most of the time, between
> people who commonly have no experience with consensus process. We
> have editors who have a strong agenda who complain that other editors
> have a different strong agenda.
>
> Consensus process can be tedious in person, where the communication
> bandwidth is far higher than mere text, we have tone of voice,
> pauses, body language (which is highly efficient compared to text at
> communicating intention). Two people just looking at each other can
> find agreement rapidly, if agreement is what they intend, yet, even
> there, communication can break down if skills are lacking.
>
> With text, without all those other cues, we still need to know,
> often, what the *point* is, in order to understand. Yet in consensus
> process, one of the steps is abandoning the point -- temporarily --
> and exploring what is present. Where there is conflict, the roots of
> the conflict may not be apparent, each party may have a complex of
> opinions, including unexplored assumptions, and finding where the
> true conflict lies can be difficult at best and may require
> discussing aspects of a situation other than the "goal," which with
> us is always, in the end, article text.
>
> Where no underlying agreement has been reached, differences of
> opinion about the result can be unresolvable.
>
> There are people who are skilled at facilitating consensus, given the
> opportunity. Dispute resolution process suggests bringing in a
> neutral party to mediate, but we don't insist on that process.
> Instead, we have editors who, when they oppose what another editor is
> trying to do, go to a noticeboard to request that the other editor be
> coerced into stopping. And the noticeboards are full of
> result-oriented editors who are impatient with process.
>
> Dispute resolution works best when discussions are very small-scale,
> it should normally be three editors involved, not the whole
> community, and the goal of one of these editors should be to help the
> other two find consensus.
>
> When I had a problem with Jehochman, who had dropped a warning on my
> Talk page that seemed to me to attack everything I was doing as
> useless garbage or worse, which warning then led to a block by
> another administrator (complicated situation from which I learned and
> accomplished a great deal), I first explored my own behavior, asking
> for advice about it. Once I had that advice, from other editors, I
> went to Jehochman and asked him to consider what I'd collected. He
> didn't want to, and I can understand. Why should he read all that
> stuff? So I asked that he suggest a mediator. He wrote "Carcharoth."
> Brilliant, I thought, I couldn't imagine anyone better. So we went to
> Carcharoth and asked for mediation.
>
> Carcharoth was even more brilliant than I expected. Carcharoth agreed
> to help, but was busy. Then, after some delay, when we asked again,
> Carcharoth wrote, "Can't you guys work it out?" So we did. Quickly,
> in fact. There was a shift in intention; our intention became to
> resolve the dispute, not to promote our own purposes and convince the
> other that we were right and they should change. Carcharoth had
> reframed the problem. The problem was our apparent inability to
> resolve the dispute by ourselves. We really unable to do this?
>
> We need to recognize that there is a problem with our own intentions.
> By focusing on article text and insisting on sticking to that, we
> sometimes divert ourselves from the process of finding agreement and
> what that takes. In real-life consensus process, the obstacle to
> agreement often turns out to be something completely unexpected, and
> to find it requires setting aside our preconceptions not only about
> others, but about ourselves.
>
> The practical suggestion here? If there is a dispute, working on it
> with discussion limited to three people, one of whom has a known
> agenda to help the other two find agreement, or, failing that, to
> document the dispute clearly so that both of the others will say,
> "Yes, that is a fair, accurate and complete statement of our
> dispute." Then, and only then, would the discussion expand.
>
> We have the mechanisms for it, the technology, but we don't insist on
> it. When a complainant appears at AN/I, the first question should be
> if there is any urgent need for administrative intervention. AN/I
> should be 911 for Wikipedia, and not a court that sits in judgment,
> AN/I has no structure for that, and frequently, when it takes this
> on, it makes bad decisions, or simply wastes a lot of editor time. If
> there is an urgent need, it should be quickly handled, without
> debate. But that intervention should be non-judgmental, making no
> assumptions or conclusions about who is right and who is wrong. The
> police do not determine guilt, they maintain and restore order and
> protect. Good police officers will, in fact, do some emergency
> mediation, but they don't normally have the time for deeper dispute
> resolution. AN/I needs some structure and discipline. As it is,
> someone calls 911 to say that their house is on fire, and someone
> else says, "That house is better off burnt down," and someone else
> says, "Didn't you call us last year for this and it was just smoke
> from a burnt pot?" and someone else says, "You shouldn't be burning
> incense" and it can go on and on and when someone finally goes to
> look at the house, it's in ruins. Put out the fire, if there is one.
> There should be almost no discussion on AN/I. Complaint is filed,
> uninvolved admin (one with no prejudgment if possible) takes the case
> and investigates, takes action if needed, and then refers the
> disputants to DR process, perhaps pointing them to a page where they
> can find a mediator if they can't agree on one themselves. Actions
> proceeding from an AN/I report, unless the cause is blatantly
> obvious, should not represent definitive judgments, as if some
> community consensus was determined that one side was right and the  
> other wrong.
>
>
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