On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:01 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
I think the very best thing we can do in terms of serving the public is to have as clear, accurate and referenced information as we can, in a well-written article, i.e. what we do anyway.
Except we only do that *most of the time*. Millions of people per month come to Wikipedia and instead see pages in some greater or lesser degree of damage. There are few products where an acceptable failure rate of multiple percent is acceptable, certainly not in anything which is possibly life-critical.
It may not be in our power to fix that problem satisfactorily, but I'd have no problem convincing an objective outsider that we're hardly even trying.
Don't make the error of assuming that the contributors all care about serving the public as many do not. What then when our public duty is "unwiki"?
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:09 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/25 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
There is only one way to prove any of that, though, and that's giving it a go.
Not so. I assume we keep the not English wikipedias around for a reason.
DE has it, and it's still ticking away. Go look at the discussions on EnWp: the counter is "De is not En". Quite true. Proof really isn't possible, and that really is what some people are *demanding*.
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There is only one way to prove any of that, though, and that's giving it a go. If we only make the flagged rev the default version for articles that are currently (semi-)protected keeping up with the sighting would be easy - that's the version of the proposal that should be completely uncontroversial.
You would think— But thats only true if the resistance is driven by a risk analysis, it's not true for resistance driven by either a hard philosophical objection (The "unwiki" position taken by many in the discussions) or due to an attempt to thwart change in general. In either of these cases you could demonstrate that it works great and those opinions would not change. Moreover, the possibility that a test may be successful and dispel fears is a reason to oppose testing for opponents whom care about things other than success.
In any case, what you're saying has been proposed multiple times and in multiple forms. It has failed to obtain consensus. So much for completely uncontroversial.
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 3:55 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
2008/11/25 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So what will it take for us to get this switched on for en:wp?
Proof that having the sighted revision as the standard view (which you have to for it to be meaningfully useful) doesn't result in a drop in editing rate.
Proof that en would be able to keep up with the required rate of sighting (We have a hard time marking new pages as patrolled at the moment)
Well there is only one way to get *proof*, so we have a Catch-22. Sure, persuasive evidence... we can get that, as far as I can tell, we've always had it: If things were so fragile that twiddling a knob will irreparably ruin it over night we would have been screwed long ago.... but you're pretty much right on in saying that people are demanding *proof*. But we can't have proof without doing it.
This is also true for any other change. Unexpected stuff happens. I'd argue that for much of what we do or could do the unexpected results are more numerous and significant than the expected ones. So the argument you expressed is basically saying that we can't change anything ever.
(I'm careful to not call it yours— because I do not believe that you're a proponent of it, but it's an argument I've seen other people make on English Wikipedia in all seriousness)
I wonder what aspects of EnWP culture contribute to the audacious solipsism of believing that its members can "no-consensus" away forces as universal as change.
Not that I'm in favour of some non-consensus massive change: I'd prefer reasonable stepping stones (like mostly replacing protection with default-view flagging) to help build knowledge and confidence and to allow an *informed* consensus to form. But that too is resisted, after all— it's admittedly a possible stepping stone. This unwillingness to *test* and explore possibilities with uncertain outcomes is why I tend to characterize EnWP's behaviour as a foolish attempt to avoid change, rather than the result of a reasonable decision making process. What can not change will die.