[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[Fred Bauder]

>
>
>> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Marc Riddell
>> <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>>> People agree and support the decision.
>>>>
>>> Fred, who are these people that are making these decisions and
>>> declaring
>>> that there in Community consensus, knowing that this "consensus"
>>> cannot be
>>> factually validated?
>
> on 2/1/11 10:34 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> It is in the nature of online collaborative communities that this
>> general question has no exact answer.
>>
>> This is fundamentally unsatisfying to a number of people, including
>> those who prefer various not-yet-universally-supported changes;
>> scientists, observers, critics, and journalists from outside the
>> community trying to understand or quantify it; many others.
>>
>> That's the way it works, though.
>>
>> I appreciate your point, which is that this way of doing things is
>> often infuriating, insane, or impossible to actually get anything done
>> in.  The reality is that we're there.  That's how Wikipedia works (for
>> whatever definition of "work" you care to apply to the state of the
>> project here, which you and others feel are unsatisfactory).
>
> George, it may be "how it works", but it also misleading - or worse. To
> state that any decision made in this manner is a "consensus of the
> Wikipedia
> Community" is fundamentally dishonest.
>
> Marc

We make decisions according to our long-standing policy of making
decisions by consensus and have successfully for many years. You saying
that our experience is bogus does not make it so. Please take a look at
Wikipedia:Consensus

Fred