[WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

[Parker Peters]

"Consensus" is what you get when you have a group of people working on
things, each independently reaching the same conclusion or being convinced
by evidence.

It morphs into "groupthink" when one of two things happens:

- Someone new arrives with new evidence and is attacked for "going against
consensus"

- the same "consensus" sits for too long and begins attaining force of
"law."

Wikipedia has a problem in this regard. The problem relates to WP:OWN as
well as WP:CIVIL, and is a natural consequence of bowing at the altar of
"Consensus" to the exclusion of factual accuracy.

The natural progression problem is that the more a small group of editors
"tunes" an article to whatever standard, the more they feel they "own" that
article, and the more they will actively oppose any other editors (other
than the group) working on it. Eventually this transforms into groupthink
and abuse towards newcomers becomes common. The smaller the group is, the
worse it becomes; the editor who feels himself "creator" of an article, and
therefore feels he has "ownership" of it, is the worst of all, but our
various POV-pushing cliques on various topics are also good examples; each
clique has what it calls a "consensus" which is actually a Groupthink, and
feels fully justified in "Punishing" (with admin tools in many cases) anyone
who is outside of what they inaccurately claim is "consensus."

The same is true of this mailing list. There are a number of "groupthink
items" that are instantly shouted down whenever addressed, often with
derisive in-jokes and buzzwords deliberately made and used to make outsiders
feel even more confused and rejected.

It's a general Wikipedia cultural attitude problem.

Parker

On 1/28/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Seeing how a few detractors here have been throwing around the term
> "groupthink" I have to ask, is there any real difference between the
> two or does it depend on which side of a "consensus" decision you are
> on? That is, if an article you wrote/are involved with survives AFD,
> then it's "consensus", if it gets deleted, it's "groupthink". Of
> course it's the other way around if it's an article you don't like.
>
> Same with an edit to an active article. If the edit stands, it's
> "consensus" if it's constantly reverted and your persistence gets you
> banned by a "rogue admin (tm)", it's "groupthink".
>
> Therefore, I have to wonder if "groupthink", as long as it doesn't
> lead to an [[Abilene paradox]] might not just be another way of saying
> "consensus" which can either be good or bad. Good if the "consensus"
> decision squares with previously established policies, bad if it
> doesn't.
>
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