On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:04:05 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:

More people not tied to the original dispute does two things. First, it takes personality conflicts off the table, which are a regrettable part of most edit wars. Second, it reduces the ability of groups to harden into place by getting closer to a statistical sampling of opinion. 2 people self selected to edit an article probably have views which are unusual, that's why they chose to edit the article. Ten or more is much more likely to reflect the broad range.

Sounds to me like a base for even more conflict. Everyone comes in with his or her own opinion, and instead of finding a compromise between 2 opinions, we suddenly have to find a compromise between 10.

Importantly, this would help to reduce the incentive for each side to bring in friends and continue the revert war.

I don't see how. If there are more people discussing, it becomes only more important to have more people speaking for your POV.

If a larger group of wikipedians can't come to a consensus, then it clearly is time for a more formal RFC to be written. But again, the more people not party to the original dispute, the more likely that RFC is to focus on the actual issues.

And then? What does an RFC do? I don't see how this helps. There will be yet more people coming in. If you're lucky they all agree with you. More likely, some will agree with you, some with the other, some with neither. And then? We still have the same conflict, but we have gone from 2 to 10 to 20 people involved. I don't see how this resolves anything.

Andre Engels