[WikiEN-l] The admin problem

[David Gerard]

Kelly Martin (kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com) [060302 10:54]:

> Robert was surely aware of the early evolutionary development of
> parliamentary procedure in the English House of Lords resulting in a
> movement from "consensus," in its original sense of unanimous
> agreement, toward a decision by majority vote as we know it today.
> This evolution came about from a recognition that a requirement of
> unanimity or near unanimity can become a form of tyranny in itself. In
> an assembly that tries to make such a requirement the norm, a variety
> of misguided feelings--reluctance to be seen as opposing the
> leadership, a notion that causing controversy will be frowned upon,
> fear of seeming an obstacle to unity--can easily lead to decisions
> being taken with a psuedoconsensus which in reality implies elements
> of default, which satisfies no one, and for which no one really
> assumes responsibility.
> This paragraph really describes what I think is going on at Wikipedia.
> I think it's time we reconsider whether "consensus" is a valid
> principle of governance in as large and contentious a community as
> this one has become, and whether we need to make more of an effort to
> move to parliamentarianism as a method of governance.


I'd question this given Kim and Gmaxwell's numbers showing almost all
articles on Wikipedia aren't contentious at all and consensus works fine.
The pathological articles are the bits you hear about, not the majority.

We must take care not to fuck up the good bits to deal with the broken
bits.


- d.