Re: [WikiEN-l] Beware the Datebot!

Jimbo- Wikipedia_talk%3AManual_of_Style_(dates_and_nu 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