On 6/29/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
On 29/06/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
My basic view of how wikis work can be condensed into "We all try to nail jelly to the wall and keep the stuff that sticks." All editors with a pragmatic, realistic view of how things work can accept that they won't always get a solution they're completely happy with.
The flaw in that rationale is that decision making on Wikipedia does not exclusively involve only editors with a pragmatic realistic view of how things work (indeed can one tie down "how things work" on Wikipedia? It's as much in flux as heavily edited articles are). Considering how the editors that one could under this rationale classify as "unrealistic" are not in agreement with the rest of those involved in discussion leading to a decision, I still do not see why we should call it "consensus". Consensus among one group of like-minded (at least perhaps in approach) editors perhaps - that's something else entirely.
Well, I'd suggest that non-pragmatists are being unreasonable if they expect us to sit down and hammer out an agreement prior to every edit. Wikipedia benefits so immensely from pragmatism and irreverence for rules that it probably makes far more sense to license the pragmatists to tweak noses on an ongoing basis than it would to clip the wings of the pragmatists and make them sit through weeks and weeks of dull and largely irrelevant discussions prior to each policy tweak or article edit.
What about the situations where one lot of people just want their way and bully opponents into submission? (perhaps classifying them as "unrealistic", trolls, biased, un-wiki, whatever) Indeed perhaps where those responsible for changing things or maintaining the status quo are just are more persistent (or have more time to devote to Wikipedia) than others.
Well, an editor on Wikipedia who cannot work well with others may often seek refuge in proceduralism, so if we've got a situation where a heap of people want to ahead and edit the encyclopedia while a few are digging their heels in and insisting that the other chaps are going "out of process", the impetus tends to lie with the cleverer pragmatists who will find a way around the procedure. I don't think we need to sanction those people, indeed I think that in Wikipedia's larrykin culture they're liable to be the ones in control.
Is that bullying? Well if the proceduralists are repeatedly thwarted and fail to get their way they'll feel that their efforts are unappreciated and probably find something more productive to do. I see that as a good thing. Your mileage may vary. More usually there is enough procedure around to satisfy both the proceduralists (who think it is necessary) and the larrykins (who would often be at a loss if there wasn't a suitably silly process to subvert).
This isn't even beginning to get to the cases where most people *are* in consensus, but the stubborn few are those who are actually in the right (you know, the cases where people post indignantly to the mailing list - "how can this be permitted on Wikipedia?").
Often either proceduralists who think the place is going to pot because a process is being subverted, or larrykins who pragmatically choose to appeal to the mailing list, calculating that it will improve their chances of success.
I'm only half-joking here. There do genuinely seem to be two tribes. Much of our policy is written by (or more accurately, is continually innovated by) the larrykins and much of our process is written by the proceduralists as an attempt to contain the policy. The two are both useful in different ways.