[WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

[Jon Awbrey]

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Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> 
> On 29 Jun 2006 at 14:14, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> 
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > >
> > > On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Pending a properly controlled study of WikiPediatric epidemiology (Proposal Pending),
> > > > it is this observer's estimation that the most prevalent IOP is the one that inverts
> > > > the priorities of the superordinate policies cited above and the unofficial dictates
> > > > of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must not be confused
> > > > with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC as it's currently
> > > > observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to agreement in a half
> > > > hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the direction of an article.
> > >
> > > You seem to be constantly inventing new terms. Why?
> >
> > You seem to be constantly looking for things to talk about except what I'm saying.  Why?
> 
> Maybe because people are having trouble figuring out just what you're
> saying?  Perhaps your points would be more understandable if you
> spent more time giving specific examples of things that have happened
> on Wikipedia that are not to your liking, rather than talking in
> vague abstractions using lots of odd terminology?
> 
> == Dan ==

Yes, that is a problem.  I'm trying to summarize the types of things that
I have seen happen repeatedly over the past six months, and I'm pretty much
discounting the first month's experience when I was still learning the ropes.

I wouldn't be bothering about it if it were just a few isolated incidents, and
when I have detailed a few of these, the response is always the "few bad apples"
defense.

But these are persistent, recurrent, and systematic patterns of events that
I've observed.  The first dozen times you see things going haywire, and by
that I mean people behaving contrary to the main Policies of Wikipedia,
you think all you have to do is read them the policies and they will
straighten up and fly right.  But that is not what happens, and in
my experience it only gets worse when you try to use WQAs, RFCs,
and so on, and that is because the people who intervene do not
bother to check the histories and do not care about the main
policies either, but simply wing it on the basis of their
own POVs and biases.

In trying to understand a systematic problem, you have to try and come up
with systematic hypotheses as to why the same damn things keep happening.

I pointed to one sort of thing that I see happening over and over,
and for ease of reference I gave it the name "priority inversion".
A priority inversion is when people spend more time worrying over
the dust under the couch than they do the elephant in the room.

One example of this is when 2 or 3 editors declare a consensus
about an issue and use that to trump the major Policies of WP,
namely NOR, NPOV, VERIFY, or the Guidelines that are listed
under the Five Pillars.

There are two things that are wrong with this kind of tactic:
(1) it is contrary to both the dictionary definition and the
WP definition of consensus, which means absence of dissent,
and (2) it violates the main [[WP:Policy]] pages that say
that NOR, NPOV, and VERIFY are non-negotiable and cannot
be trumped by other policies or by editors' consensus,
even a geunine univesal consensus of local editors.

For example, under the proper ordering of priorities
a statement that is relevant and sourced should not
be deleted in favor of an opinion that is unsourced
just because the source is not the favorite writer
of 2 or 3 editors or because the sourced statement
contradicts the personal POVs of 2 or 3 editors.
But this is actually the routine way that things
are done in WP.

Now, if you've never experienced a situation where the editors working on
a given article engaged in this kind of conduct, then you have been very
lucky, and you will not know what I mean.  But I can only report my own
observations that it happens quite a lot.  What it means is that the
quality of articles goes down in proportion to the non-compliance
with the primary WP policies.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
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