On 3/1/06, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Has the userbox debate yet generated anything
positive?
Not in my viewing of it, at least not commensurate to the amount of
frustration and negativity it has created on all sides of it, and the
amount of resources it has taken up.
I regret my involvement in the userbox situation.
I've been away from Wikipedia for a while now, and have had time to
reflect on recent affairs. I've also been doing some reading. The
following paragraph jumped out at me from a book I was reading:
Robert was surely aware of the early evolutionary development of
parliamentary procedure in the English House of Lords resulting in a
movement from "consensus," in its original sense of unanimous
agreement, toward a decision by majority vote as we know it today.
This evolution came about from a recognition that a requirement of
unanimity or near unanimity can become a form of tyranny in itself. In
an assembly that tries to make such a requirement the norm, a variety
of misguided feelings--reluctance to be seen as opposing the
leadership, a notion that causing controversy will be frowned upon,
fear of seeming an obstacle to unity--can easily lead to decisions
being taken with a psuedoconsensus which in reality implies elements
of default, which satisfies no one, and for which no one really
assumes responsibility.
This paragraph really describes what I think is going on at Wikipedia.
I think it's time we reconsider whether "consensus" is a valid
principle of governance in as large and contentious a community as
this one has become, and whether we need to make more of an effort to
move to parliamentarianism as a method of governance.
I'm not quite crazy enough to sign Karmafist's manifesto, but I am now
convinced -- after reading the discussions here and in other places --
that Wikipedia needs a strict rule prohibiting administrative "wheel
wars": if an admin performs ANY admin action and any other admin
objects to it, it MUST be reverted and the matter referred for
discussion and decision amongst a proper deliberative body. The
current methods are yielding "pseudoconsensus" -- or sometimes
multiple pseudoconsensuses -- and are magnifying disputes instead of
tempering them. Until something is done, things will only get worse.
Continuining on this course cannot be the best thing for Wikipedia.
Kelly