On 1/31/07, Parker Peters parkerpeters1002@gmail.com wrote:
"Consensus" is what you get when you have a group of people working on things, each independently reaching the same conclusion or being convinced by evidence.
It morphs into "groupthink" when one of two things happens:
- Someone new arrives with new evidence and is attacked for "going against
consensus"
- the same "consensus" sits for too long and begins attaining force of
"law."
Wikipedia has a problem in this regard. The problem relates to WP:OWN as well as WP:CIVIL, and is a natural consequence of bowing at the altar of "Consensus" to the exclusion of factual accuracy.
The natural progression problem is that the more a small group of editors "tunes" an article to whatever standard, the more they feel they "own" that article, and the more they will actively oppose any other editors (other than the group) working on it. Eventually this transforms into groupthink and abuse towards newcomers becomes common. The smaller the group is, the worse it becomes; the editor who feels himself "creator" of an article, and therefore feels he has "ownership" of it, is the worst of all, but our various POV-pushing cliques on various topics are also good examples; each clique has what it calls a "consensus" which is actually a Groupthink, and feels fully justified in "Punishing" (with admin tools in many cases) anyone who is outside of what they inaccurately claim is "consensus."
The same is true of this mailing list. There are a number of "groupthink items" that are instantly shouted down whenever addressed, often with derisive in-jokes and buzzwords deliberately made and used to make outsiders feel even more confused and rejected.
It's a general Wikipedia cultural attitude problem.
Parker
This is typically how it works: one dissenter or critical thinker points out "X job is not being done properly"; the "concensus" interprets this to mean, "Joe, the member who performs X job, is being attacked". By cencensus then, the critical dissenter is marginalized and demonized, while the problem of the work product -- which is a totally valid criticism exposed by critical thinking -- is ignored.
nobs01