-----Original Message----- From: Zoney [mailto:zoney.ie@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 04:01 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Consensus" and decision making on Wikipedia
Consensus is a favorite word on Wikipedia, pulled out on all occasions whether on AfD, policy decisions, or simple article content matters. Going by the dictionary definition of "consensus" (e.g. on Wiktionary) or our own encyclopaedia article on consensus, can we really claim that decision-making on Wikipedia is by consensus?
Historically many decisions seemed to mostly go by majority (of small group of debate/vote participants) or large majority for change. Now, partly on the basis of "voting is evil", there seems to be more and more decisions made after "debate", where realistically, the action taken afterwards (or during) is either arbitrary, majority wish (going by comment counting/argument weighting rather than vote counting), or simply rule by the strong-minded who just do what they wish when they've at least some people to back them up (indeed perhaps not even that). I would suggest few decisions are made from truly forming consensus between debate participants, let alone considering the wider community.
Really - is there any hope of having a fixed method of decision-making on Wikipedia, rather than a shambolic pretence of achieving consensus that just allows groups to make decisions in different circumstances according to different methods as it suits them?
Zoney
Consensus, like neutral point of view, has its mythic side, but making it work depends on participating in the process and learning how to make it work. We may eventually get good at it.
Fred
Fred Bauder wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Zoney [mailto:zoney.ie@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 04:01 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: [WikiEN-l] "Consensus" and decision making on Wikipedia
Consensus is a favorite word on Wikipedia, pulled out on all occasions whether on AfD, policy decisions, or simple article content matters. Going by the dictionary definition of "consensus" (e.g. on Wiktionary) or our own encyclopaedia article on consensus, can we really claim that decision-making on Wikipedia is by consensus?
Historically many decisions seemed to mostly go by majority (of small group of debate/vote participants) or large majority for change. Now, partly on the basis of "voting is evil", there seems to be more and more decisions made after "debate", where realistically, the action taken afterwards (or during) is either arbitrary, majority wish (going by comment counting/argument weighting rather than vote counting), or simply rule by the strong-minded who just do what they wish when they've at least some people to back them up (indeed perhaps not even that). I would suggest few decisions are made from truly forming consensus between debate participants, let alone considering the wider community.
Really - is there any hope of having a fixed method of decision-making on Wikipedia, rather than a shambolic pretence of achieving consensus that just allows groups to make decisions in different circumstances according to different methods as it suits them?
Zoney
Consensus, like neutral point of view, has its mythic side, but making it work depends on participating in the process and learning how to make it work. We may eventually get good at it.
Fred
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I really don't think we're all that bad at it to begin with. Generally, what I've seen is that strongarm tactics work for a while, maybe. But eventually, enough people start to see it for what it is that they say "No, this actually -isn't- the way we want to do this." That's how consensus asserts itself even in the face of force-you knock a bunch of people over on your way to something, a lot of them are going to get back up mad.
Of course, the ideal scenario is to have a decent discussion -first-, avoiding such nastiness. But strongarming just can't overpower a genuine consensus against whatever's being done forever.
The only workable concept of consensus I've ever discovered is stability. If hundreds of people edit a piece of work in good faith over a long period, what changes least over time may be presumed to be there by consensus. However even the most apparently stable elements of a work may be deposed quite easily. The result may be a new consensus or, in other cases, a period of instability where the new version and the old version compete.
As an editing community, I think we're probably far more tolerant of radical change than we used to be, but probably not tolerant enough. Most of us (myself included) are somewhat squeamish about junking bad stuff and starting over, and this squeamishness is probably to the detriment of the project.
On policy issues, the overriding requirements and purpose of the project are often ignored or poorly understood by large parts of the community, which I believe is mostly due to lack of acculturation in the core values. The antithesis of this is the statement that the encyclopedia takes precedence over the community. This encyclopedia-community dichotomy makes consensus-building difficult in areas of developing policy. However the community quickly falls into line with new policy once it can be shown to work. In that sense, policy is what works.
I accept this criterion as necessary. And so the repeated AfDs on the most important issues with contradictory results are proof of the system's failure.
On 6/27/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
The only workable concept of consensus I've ever discovered is stability. If hundreds of people edit a piece of work in good faith over a long period, what changes least over time may be presumed to be there by consensus. However even the most apparently stable elements of a work may be deposed quite easily. The result may be a new consensus or, in other cases, a period of instability where the new version and the old version compete.
David Goodman wrote:
I accept this criterion as necessary. And so the repeated AfDs on the most important issues with contradictory results are proof of the system's failure.
On 6/27/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
The only workable concept of consensus I've ever discovered is stability. If hundreds of people edit a piece of work in good faith over a long period, what changes least over time may be presumed to be there by consensus. However even the most apparently stable elements of a work may be deposed quite easily. The result may be a new consensus or, in other cases, a period of instability where the new version and the old version compete.
Only if one takes the premise that consensus can never change. I've seen many AfDs where the first result was "Keep and clean up", "keep and source", "keep and rewrite so it's NPOV", etc. By the time it's on the second or third go-round, and nothing after the "and" has actually gotten done (or is being actively resisted), some who argued that way actually change their mind and argue to delete.
On 6/27/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
The only workable concept of consensus I've ever discovered is stability. If hundreds of people edit a piece of work in good faith over a long period, what changes least over time may be presumed to be there by consensus. However even the most apparently stable elements of a work may be deposed quite easily. The result may be a new consensus or, in other cases, a period of instability where the new version and the old version compete.
This is easy to game. Just find a situation where dropping the work of the hundreds of people is easy, but restoring it is orders of magnitude more difficult. Drop their work and then claim a new "consensus" because it isn't restored.
On 6/28/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
This is easy to game. Just find a situation where dropping the work of the hundreds of people is easy, but restoring it is orders of magnitude more difficult. Drop their work and then claim a new "consensus" because it isn't restored.
... as for instance mass erasures of links to a particular site?
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007, The Mangoe wrote:
This is easy to game. Just find a situation where dropping the work of the hundreds of people is easy, but restoring it is orders of magnitude more difficult. Drop their work and then claim a new "consensus" because it isn't restored.
... as for instance mass erasures of links to a particular site?
I suppose, but I was thinking of spoiler warnings.
On 6/28/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
I suppose, but I was thinking of spoiler warnings.
Yeah, that too. Right now the system is biased toward anyone who is willing to systematically apply some principle across a bunch of not-too-related articles, leaving as the only recourse that someone finds the offender and systematically reverts his changes using his contribs (and thus leaving the reverter open to charges of "wikistalking"). Get a few different people doing this and unless someone gets clued in enough to look for them all, a lot of the damage will stay.
On 6/28/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On 6/27/07, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
The only workable concept of consensus I've ever discovered is stability. If hundreds of people edit a piece of work in good faith over a long period, what changes least over time may be presumed to be there by consensus. However even the most apparently stable elements of a work may be deposed quite easily. The result may be a new consensus or, in other cases, a period of instability where the new version and the old version compete.
This is easy to game. Just find a situation where dropping the work of the hundreds of people is easy, but restoring it is orders of magnitude more difficult. Drop their work and then claim a new "consensus" because it isn't restored.
In my view of things, the stability of the new system provides it with a competitive advantage. Short of applying some kind of compensatory gearing, which I think would be unworkable, there is no way of nullifying the advantage of simplicity.
There is a tension between this gradient towards simplification and the natural tendency of thousands of individuals working roughly in concert to produce byzantine complexity.