[WikiEN-l] Why are veterans so militant of late; The Future. (was Bus Uncle)

[Thomas Dalton]

> If this happens, will it be a good thing? If not, why not?

It's difficult to say. There are definite downsides to such a
situation - for example, consider a scenario where there is a problem
and two potential solutions, either of which would work, and the
community is fairly evenly split between them. It doesn't really
matter which is chosen, but neither will be chosen because anyone
trying to push forward their idea will be pushed back by the other
side. In the past, it's always been possible for someone in authority
to step in a say "Ok, this is how it's going to be" and people would
accept that. That is becoming less and less the case and sooner or
later, we will end up in an argument we can't get out of. The most
likely next step would be voting and decide policy that way. It would
be the end of consensus driven decision making and the beginning of
democracy (I think that is generally accepted as a bad thing).

That's the main problem with large groups - consensus becomes
impossible to achieve. We've already had to switch to "rough
consensus" in most places, which causes no end of problems since there
is no real definition of what "rough consensus" is.

There are, of course, upsides - you've covered most of them, I think.

The only idea I've had for dealing with this situation once it gets
unmanageable is some kind of parliament. The community elects a
certain number of MPs, and the MPs make policy decisions (just making
policy - enforcing policy in individual cases remains with the
community) based on consensus. Basically, mixing democracy and
consensus. It is a far from ideal solution, but it is getting harder
and harder to make policy decisions, and sooner or later it will
become impossible and we will need something.