Erik Moeller wrote:
A mail from Ed? Surely this cannot be, as you just announced your departure from the project a couple of days ago (for the second time), and wrote that Wikipedia is doomed. Or are you perhaps a bit moody? Let me guess, the big advantage of Sunday school over Wikipedia was that it was *only* on Sundays ;-)
Ah, he's only bluffing ^_^. (I hope *_*.)
The problem I see is that in a consensus-finding decision making process, a single dedicated person can prolong discourse forever.
A *single* person can't prolong the decision-making process forever, because we have enough people around that lack of a single person is no obstacle to reaching a consensus. Consensus != unanimity (in English, although apparently it does mean that in French -- see some earlier posts between me and Anthere).
And even with a voting mechanism in place, a single dedicated person could still prolong *discourse* forever. Or would you censor speech? [[Democratic centralism]] != democracy (indeed, the term is a misnomer). Whatever decision-making process we use, those who dissent must still always have the right to express that dissent, or democracy is over, whatever of its trappings may remain.
Nothing in our rules says that Lir cannot continue the debate about naming conventions forever -- so it would be wrong for us to punish her if she does.
Absolutely wrong! Voting is one thing, but if this much *ever* changed, then there would be no democracy left in Wikipedia, and I would have to leave.
And I'm afraid that when people get tired of our tedious decision making process, they will want to resort to more drastic forms of enforcement and more permanent power structures, which will in turn lead to wrong decisions, alienation, power struggles.
Agreed, but IMO, that's exactly what *you* are trying to do ^_^. (Don't misunderstood me; I know that your intentions are only the best. I only think that the effect would be bad.)
-- Toby