On Mar 21, 2007, at 12:01 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
jf_wikipedia wrote:
(a) What was done that we should not have done;
The change was made before a sufficient process had taken place to
make
the change, with the result that many good editors were unaware that
such a fundamental change was about to take place. Many have reported
being baffled and unhappy with the change.
(b) What was not done that we should have done;
A process which has worked well in the past is a process of discussion
to arrive at a specific proposal, followed by a broad public poll (or
"vote"), followed by a certification of the result.
This achieves something quite useful: broad notification, a serious
assessment of the strength or weakness of support for some
proposal, and
a defined endpoint so that people know that policy has been changed.
All of these things serve to promote harmony by making policy changes
democratic rather than power struggles.
(c) How do we gauge consensus as it relates to
policy changes.
We do not have a simple clear definition of this.
(d) Do we need to involve you in the final
determination so this does
not happen again?
I think this would be a good thing, yes. I do not want to have a veto
over policy changes (other than perhaps WP:NPOV - if a vote of 90% of
all editors was to turn Wikipedia into Conservapedia, I would not
accept
it at all of course :) ). But I think it is important that for really
major shifts of policy, we have a clear and defined endpoint.
--Jimbo
Thank you for the reply.
I was not aware of the need for a broad public poll. For example,
WP:BLP, which I was quite involved in formulating, went from proposal
to policy without such public poll.
As for the argument that "many good editors were unaware", I find
that puzzling: How could such editors *not* be aware with all the
discussions, involvement, redirecting of high-traffic pages such as
NPOV and V, the referencing to WP:ATT in ArbCom cases, etc?
As for your last point, that is very clear and useful as it defines
an unambiguous endpoint.
-- Jossi