Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 08/02/2008, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
We decided against spoiler templates
Correction: The people who cared about spoiler templates decided against spoiler templates. The people who thought it was a nonissue didn't participate.
That's pretty much how consensus works. The difference between consensus and unanimity is that with consensus people don't have to agree, they just have to not disagree strongly enough to want to do anything about it. (It's a rather loose definition, but I think it works pretty well.)
Whatever consensus you may have is still only of those present and participating. There are so many issues being debated that it's completely exhausting to keep up. Most people would prefer to be adding and contributing than debating every contentious point.
I mostly don't contribute to pop-culture articles, but I respect the people who do. I do read certain ones when it's timely for other off-wiki conversations in my life, because it has become the most useful comprehensive site about the area for non-specialist. A non-specialist who wants to become informed about a subject does not want to spend an hour just trying to figure out the best website to inform him about it. I like the idea that if I want to find out what happened in a certain episode of the original "Star Trek", I know where to go.I could probably say the same about a lot of other subject areas.
These consensus battles should not become about winning or losing, because if either side comes out of the battle feeling a loser there is no consensus. Deletion battles are about winning and losing, because if an article is completely deleted someone has indeed list.
Ec