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JA = Jon Awbrey MB = Matt Brown
MB: So I have some questions:
MB: 4. If so, then what decision making process should replace it?
JA: I think that editors should read the WP policies early and often and decide for themselves whether they really believe that's the way it ought to be done. People who are used to the requirements of accurate, balanced reporting, and responsible scholarship find those principles already familiar, because that's the rules of the game that they've been living by all along. Other people seem to read that stuff and go "yeah sure", then they go right back to the type of popularity contest of ideas that they are familiar with. Until the community embodies those principles as secind nature, it doesn't really matter whether they use Robot's Rules or just draw straws.
MB: I hope I'm not putting words in Jon Awbrey's mouth by stating that he thinks the problem is that when consensus can be defined as "Me and three of my friends I IM'd to come and agree with me", there's a problem. Especially when a "consensus" among like-minded people on the same side of an issue can be used to trump core Wikipedia policies and standard Wikipedia ways of working.
JA: Yes, that's a good way to put it.
MB: Part of the issue is that there's always tension between deciding an issue for good on the one hand, and having every single opinionated person coming along to any article being able to re-open things for which an adequate conclusion has already been reached.
JA: I have run into some pretty insistent 1-idea or 1-issue people in WP. In my experience folks like that are not really all that big a problem. Two sorts of things typically happen. (1) You find some way to include a 1-liner in the article that accommodates their POV. (2) Your have to be firm with them about the fact that bowing to their issue would violate a non-negotiable WP policy. One of the reasons that these people are not that big a problem is that they are somewhat aware that their idea or their issue is an individual or minority position, and so you don't have to make them conscious of the fact that it ''is'' a POV. The Really Big Problems, the so far just about insoluble problems in WP compliance come from people who have never had, or can't remember ever having had a different POV from the one they now have, or who have always been confluent with what happens to be the dominant "religion" (POV) in their parish. These folks are not even aware that they have a POV, so they can't imagine how could it be anything but neutral, or how any other POV could even be regarded as rational. So they have a divine duty to stamp out all diversity.
JA: In the comments from MB that follow, I am guesssing that he is talking only about policy pages, not the main body of articles. As far as content goes, that is, on pages that are not being watched by masses of observers all the time, the partisans of the "instant consensus" never check to see what kind of concensus may have preceded them.
MB: Standard Wikipedia policy/practise here is that there are no permanent decisions on Wikipedia apart from core policy, but that if an issue has been decided by strong rough consensus, we're resistant to re-opening the issue unless the one wishing to re-open it can convince enough people that the previous rough consensus no longer holds.
MB: "Strong rough consensus" in my opinion means an issue that for the vast majority of contributors has a result they can live with - even if not outright approve - and that has been reached after a satisfactory discussion, a satisfactory attempt at compromise, a respect for policy, and with sufficient editors involved that are representative on the issue.
MB: IMO, a rough consensus is not a strong one, a good one, if it has been arrived at without discussion, without attempts to find common ground, without regard for over-riding policy, or without sufficient numbers of contributors or variety of points-of-view to be truly representative.
MB: There are many editors on Wikipedia who want to truly do the right thing and achieve good results. There are enough others, however, who want articles to say exactly what THEY wish them to say, and who will game the rules and do everything they can to get their way. (There are probably other categories of editors, of course, but this is simplifying).
MB: I have a feeling that another issue Jon has is that some contributors are too willing to remove things from articles if they don't like them, regardless of the work that went into them, the usefulness of the content, or in any way trying to achieve consensus for that removal.
MB: Jon, do I have your positions right?
JA: The main thing will be whether the majority of editors understands the WP policies, and why the actual community practice departs so widely from the preaching.
JA: I will have to leave it at that.
Jon Awbrey
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