[WikiEN-l] Bureaucrats decide!

[Zoney]

On 10/04/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/10/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > aaaaand, one-moron-one-vote is, if not dead, certainly marked for
> disposal:
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Danny/Bureaucrat_chat
>
> I'm sorry, but whatever you voted in this RfA you have to agree that
> it is impossible to say that consensus was reached to promote when
> more than a hundred people opposed. There wasn't even agreement
> between the bureaucrats themselves! If there was ever a poster child
> for a "no consensus" decision, this would be it.
>
> Apparently that core principle has been abandoned.
>
> --Oskar
>
>
>
Consensus is just a weasel word on Wikipedia that at various times allows
people to either a) ignore majority, often even significant majority votes
"we don't have consensus" and at other times b) ignore minority objections,
sometimes significant minorities "too bad you object - we have consensus".

In all cases, those who are persistent, or more agressive Wikipedians
commanding more authority for themselves, get their own way.

Wikipedia is not a democracy, and it is not anything else sensible instead.
People are deluding themselves if they think there's a consistent process
for decision making from everything to RFA, policy, deletions, article
content, heck - even NPOV is acheived by a mish-mash of votes/debate/looking
for "consensus" - of course the result usually is just whatever group shouts
loudest. It does work a lot of the time because often the majority of those
involved will carry the decision despite the "Wikipedia is not a democracy"
line, but really there isn't even a broken decision-making mechanism.
There's usually no consistent mechanism at all.

Zoney
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