[WikiEN-l] "Consensus" and decision making on Wikipedia

[White Cat]

It is not supposed to be a vote at all. Vote based decisions happen in
democracies and we are not one.

    - White Cat

On 6/28/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/26/07, White Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If large amount of votes fail to meet common sense they are to be
> ignored.
> > If something is a copyvio despite a mass amount of votes [baseless]
> > contradicting this, they should be ignored. Ideally closing admin
> shouldn't
> > have views on the discussion weighting the comments in an unbiased
> manner.
> >
> > Historically AFD was never intended to be a vote. Polls can help to
> > determine consensus but they are not absolute. Each closure can have
> special
> > circumstances. Admins should delete/keep something despite votes if
> > necessary. This is good practice.
> >
> > Otherwise you are promoting sock/meatpuppetry. There are plenty of
> > non-problem free articles where different approaches on the topic exist.
> So
> > a group of politically motivated people can infest a series of AfDs and
> get
> > otherwise good articles deleted. Or the contrary, a group of politically
> > motivated people can '''keep''' a nonsense/useless article even if it
> would
> > be deleted otherwise.
> >
> > We do have far too many deletion discussions on en.wikipedia, in a
> stable
> > encyclopedia not many deletion discussions should occur. I believe the
> > number of deletion discussions will decrease on the long run but in the
> > meanwhile I expect it to sky rocket more. We may consider hourly
> listings at
> > this rate rather than the current daily.
> >
> > Also AfD, MfD, RfA, CfD has a group of resident voters. Decisions there
> are
> > made by this "elite" group that is representing the minority of the
> general
> > wiki. IMHO this should be discouraged.
> >
> >    - White Cat
> >
> >
> > On 6/27/07, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Consensus is a favorite word on Wikipedia, pulled out on all occasions
> > > whether on AfD, policy decisions, or simple article content matters.
> Going
> > > by the dictionary definition of "consensus" (e.g. on Wiktionary) or
> our
> > > own
> > > encyclopaedia article on consensus, can we really claim that
> > > decision-making
> > > on Wikipedia is by consensus?
> > >
> > > Historically many decisions seemed to mostly go by majority (of small
> > > group
> > > of debate/vote participants) or large majority for change. Now, partly
> on
> > > the basis of "voting is evil", there seems to be more and more
> decisions
> > > made after "debate", where realistically, the action taken afterwards
> (or
> > > during) is either arbitrary, majority wish (going by comment
> > > counting/argument weighting rather than vote counting), or simply rule
> by
> > > the strong-minded who just do what they wish when they've at least
> some
> > > people to back them up (indeed perhaps not even that). I would suggest
> few
> > > decisions are made from truly forming consensus between debate
> > > participants,
> > > let alone considering the wider community.
> > >
> > > Really - is there any hope of having a fixed method of decision-making
> on
> > > Wikipedia, rather than a shambolic pretence of achieving consensus
> that
> > > just
> > > allows groups to make decisions in different circumstances according
> to
> > > different methods as it suits them?
> > >
> > > Zoney
> > > --
> > > ~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
> I don't really see articles closed against the consensus, though.
> They seem to be closed with the consensus, after all, that's what a
> consensus is, basically a vote.  Occassionally something strange
> happens, but generally it's the vote.
>
> KP
>
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