On 5/17/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The other problem is that it's pretty much never 1000. Almost all votelike things on Wikipedia have participation rates in the single digits for any individual discussion.
Well, a funny thought about that. RfAs from back in the day had what, 5-10 to pass? A bit more? 100+ supports now isn't uncommon, a couple of years later. A heated AfD might get 50-100 total nowadays. Policy discussions are limited to the cliques that want to enforce them for whatever (good or bad) reason, that are interested in that given one for some reason (badlydrawnjeff and notability/DRV stuff for example), and general policy wonks like Sidaway and Radiant.
Imagine how crazy it could be by 2010 if the participation continues to scale as it has. You might have AfD numbers (50-100) on a typical policy chat, and numbers like that ATT poll on RfA. At some tipping point, discussion in the sense it's known as now will become impractical and unrealistic, and the system will become geared to a vote-like mentality out of sheer practicality, which would devalue individual voices (not particularly a bad thing, but that's an old bone of mine) and enhance the value of community trends. I could be wrong, though.
Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com