Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 08/02/2008, Ben Yates
<ben.louis.yates(a)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