[Foundation-l] Conflict resolution on meta Wikimedia

[Rowan Collins]

Christiaan, Gerard, et al:

* I have not previously been involved in any of the discussions over
image suppression / self-censorship / content choice, and do not, at
present intend to state any particular opinion about this issue.
* I don't know what, if any, formal conflict resolution procedures
there are on meta, but since you've asked here, I thought I would give
some personal opinions about the conflict you are having. I would
stress that I have no set opinion on this debate, so although these
are my opinions, I hope they are relatively unbiased.

* Firstly, I do not consider Gerard's actions to be "trolling", but
nor do I consider Christiaan to be "blinkered". This is a conflict of
understanding, pure and simple, regarding the purpose of a particular
page. This seems to be something of a problem on meta, because it is
so unstructured, and lacks a coherent community of its own, so people
vary greatly in how they perceive it. (I've been involved in similarly
heated debates over pages to do with single login proposals.)

* Secondly, I don't think the use of a "disputed tag" is appropriate
here: meta has no NPOV policy, or any equivalent, and simply linking
to that of the English Wikipedia is irrelevant. Meta is a very
different environment, and meta pages are more closely related to
those of traditional wikis, in that they are a kind of on-going
refactored discussion, rather than content aimed at presentation.
Indeed, it's debatable whether many of them should have separate
"Talk:" pages at all - a traditional Wiki simply refactors discussion
["ThreadMode"] into structured content ["DocumentMode"] as necessary.
[Note that there is an exception in terms of "documentation" pages,
but those are increasingly confined to the Help: namespace] In other
words, disputed or disputable content is the norm, not the exception.

* Thirdly, I do think it is important for those creating a page with a
particular purpose in mind to not only state what is on-topic, but
provide an outlet for what is off-topic. If "philosophical" discussion
about the proposal is taking place elsewhere, it should be referenced
clearly. In other words, the introduction should read something like
"This page discusses technical implications of implementing such a
scheme; for discussion of whether it would be desirable, see: ..." If
there is no page appropriate to end that sentence, it should be
created, if only by adding a heading to the existing page under which
the discussion can take place. It seems to me that there *is* a lot of
existint discussion about this, so it ought to be possible for a
central point to be found or created. [References to appropriate parts
of the mailing list archives could also be added.]

* In summary: *in my opinion* it is perfectly OK for a page on meta to
exist that discusses the technical measures needed for something that
may never happen; however, it is also OK for people to discuss the
necessity and/or desirability of the feature. Therefore, if it seems
appropriate to separate the two, they should be adequately
cross-referenced, so that it is clear to anyone entering the
discussion how they relate.

I hope this helps, and I hope it doesn't read too much like legalese -
I've been reading documents from my local Borough Council all
afternoon...

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]