On 3/22/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/21/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 14:27:42 -0700, Jossi Fresco jossifresco@mac.com wrote:
That is why this is so painful to witness these claims of "it was not widely know".
I knew there was a discussion months ago, I had absolutely no idea - none at all - that it was still active, let alone about to replace the other policies. Where have I been all that time? In the usual places.
This was my impression as well. I didn't mind it, but it did suprise me.
Likely lesson: Wikipedia has exceeded process critical mass. We now have more things going on more quickly than the existing static process can adequately track and keep people aware of.
In a business, this sort of discovery triggers a round of executive and management soul-searching, followed by a painful round of process consultants, executive retreats, the creation of new business process management groups, a couple of new VPs, etc etc.
FWIW, I didn't know anything about this at all till a few days before the merge was official (thanks to the mailing list). I didn't care, though, because as a member of the descriptivist school, I make policy by doing whatever floats my boat. :p
On a serious note, I think it's quite clear that our governance processes are not scaling. I think this actually became clear about a year ago, with the userbox scandal and whatnot. Consensus gets us deadlock; rule by decree of Jimbo/ArbCom/whatever gets us discontent; democracy gets us a tyranny of the majority. How then are we to govern ourselves?
The status quo of consensus can still work for a while, I think. But as this ATT issue has shown, consensus will eventually become more and more of a farce, as fewer and fewer people (relative to the total number of Wikipedians) are involved in policy-making. The anti-VfD/AfD gang, who I often don't agree with, have been pointing this out for years - on AfD "consensus" is basically the consensus of whoever bothered to show up.
AfD has somewhat resolved these problems by having an admin look over the discussion after it's taken place, and letting the admin have the final say. In other words, consensus has been redefined to mean "the generally unanimous agreement of whoever bothered to show up, unless an admin thinks the consensus patently contravenes policy".
I think this is what Jimbo is proposing - that he become, in effect, the admin who looks over the discussion and decides whether there is "consensus". Will this work? I hope it does, and it's certainly the only reasonable governance method I can think of - although it does not resolve the issue of the consensus being formed only by whoever bothered to show up.
I'm not fond of the voting idea. A non-binding straw poll is excellent in theory, but from experience, any straw poll's purpose ends up being misconstrued faster than you can say "voting is evil". A binding or pseudo-binding vote is even worse.
Johnleemk