On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@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@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