From: Brian Corr BCorr@NEAction.org

A) Seek Consensus, But Vote: For example, most of the organizations have a board of director that votes and uses majorities when necessary, but most hesitate to accept a vote if it is close, and they prefer to achieve something approaching consensus, but will accept a decision if there is a large majority (this seems similar to Wikipedia).

Nod. Filtered users, older than one month, with more than 100 major edits are the board.

Perhaps will it be necessary to flag them for easier management. They could be also those with the right to "validate" wikipedia for the paper/Cd version.

C) True Consensus: One organization I work with --

the

So it might not be too easy with so many Wikipedians who like to argue about *everything* ;-)

You noticed ? :-) Yes, probably not very usable.

btw, is the new deletion policy being submitted to the 2/3 threshold to be adopted, and to consensus ?

Primarily, I think that we need to think about the concept of voting and how it affects group processes. Wikipedia is an unusual hybrid of Wiki, NPOV, *and* altruistic self-interest (i.e., we all get some satisfaction from what we do here, but we also do it for the good of the project/community/world). I also think we need to look at how our decision-making processes affect how much we are open or closed -- we can be "open" to everybody, but if only one type of person can handle being a contributor or editor, what does that really mean for us.

Very true As well as the limit where those who do not fit well in that spirit decide to leave under peer pressure, or because the rules put them away. Somehow, I think that when a user does not fit well, it is quite different that people go to him, and try to explain, and try to negociate, try to convince him to change for the better

or just drop a boilerplate on his user page, saying "this is user does not respect regulations #23.3 bis and TR-W3 ter - user name blocked".

Of course, second choice is much quicker, and likely, the person putting the boilerplate feels little responsability since she is just following a legal rule. Her action is little controversial. That help going toward more peace and fluidity.

If the choice is to discuss, it is longer, it is more controversial, it can generate a lot of heat, perhaps too much heat.

I was thinking here for example of the issue of refactoring/removing personal attacks versus not.

If removing is not "legalised", it may be that the cleaner is attacked himself, reverted, has to insist a lot to clean the place, to fight for his opinion. Likely to generate much anger between people

If removing is "legalised", when he does, and someone complain, he just has to say "look, there is a rule. If you disagree with my doing so, just change the rule".

So...perhaps would it be best to have few rules when the community is strong and can handle disagreement, and on the contrary strong rules when it is chaotic and diverse ?

Anyway, I have been reflecting a little bit about

what >I should focus my energy on -- and it seems like I >should be writing articles and *not* checking Votes

for deletion fifteen times each day. But I also feel that it is important to pay attention to the housekeeping work also, and that often takes me back to VfD and to Recent Changes. But I do think that we can bring something positive to articles and be NPOV --

but >I find it hard to decide the balance between

*contributing* and *housekeeping*.

:-) When people start, they write contribute mostly After a while, they do housekeeping After, perhaps, they teach others to do the housekeeping :-)

There are many different task in housekeeping My laundry is waiting btw

And here's one more good link to check out: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle.

I >think we might be somewhere near 17

(Wiki:DeclineOfCivility -- there are more strangers than friends, and AssumeGoodFaith fails as reputation is fleeting) and 18 (arrival of the PoliceForces)

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle is a good link

Anyway, that what I'm thinking today -- but tomorrow it may all change ;+)>

Brian

That is what make it worth it :-)

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