On 10/07/14 15:53, Brion Vibber wrote:
Perhaps it's time to stop calling self-selected surveys of a tiny subset of our user base "community consensus".
The vast majority of our user base never logs in, never edits, and never even hears about these RfC pages. Those are the people we're making an encyclopedia for.
-- brion
And those who do log in, edit, and comment on RfCs generally do so with the understanding, on some level, that everything they do, that the entire encyclopedia, is for the readers, because without an audience there would be nothing. They know their audience, they interact directly with this audience on the talkpages and in email, and indeed they often use the site exactly as this audience would, simply taking things a step further to edit as well.
So when they speak for the users who never log in, never edit, and never comment, do not discount them. No more than you discount yourself when you try to speak for the users who never log in, never edit, and never comment.
-I