[WikiEN-l] Reflections on the end of the spoiler wars

[Ray Saintonge]

Philip Sandifer wrote:
> But unfortunately, everybody sane also demonstrated a  
> general lack of willingness to participate in the same debates for  
> months on end. And so the actual discussions have been deadlocks as a  
> handful of tenacious proponents of the losing side continue stamping  
> their feet.
>
> This is a major tarpit, and is one of the ways in which dreadfully  
> stupid things are allowed to profligate. 
Wow!  I like the expression.  Has anyone more recent than Milton used it 
as a verb?
> It makes policy formation and  
> the engagement of remotely tricky and nuanced situations a horrid  
> timesink that is unsuitable for sane conduct. So what can we do? How  
> can we streamline our policy formation problems to drive away the  
> policy equivalents of lunatic POV pushers? Again, noting that the  
> usual problems - consensus can change, so forcibly closing debates  
> doesn't work, often contributors who are totally insane on one point  
> are wonderful on every other article they edit, etc. So what can we do?
The danger to collaboration is that most people go into a debate with a 
will to win.  If they end up in the minority they see themselves as 
losers.  What we bring into a debate are a lot of hard-wired 
preconceptions about decision making founded in a competitive system.  
We allow somewhat less than perfect politicians to be our role models.  
Until we can recognize that we do this we are doomed to keep repeating 
the same mistakes, including impatience to have decisions made and done 
with so that we can go on with something else.

The wiki's population is a fluid one.  The people here to-day are no 
longer the ones who adopted these rules in the first place.  They might 
have adopted different rules; we can't say for sure. Instead they are 
trapped in a monolithic structure that they know not how to change.

One of the most frustrating tags that I see in policy and process pages 
effectively says "the discussion has been closed, please do not add any 
further comments."  If I want to open the discussion anew I must start 
from square one. This institutionalizes an incredibly strong bias in 
favour of the status quo   A newbie or someone who did not know the 
debate was happening doesn't have a chance.

I think that no debate should ever be closed.  To be sure if certain 
thresholds of support are met it can be implemented, but people can keep 
expressing their support or opposition  If then the support falls below 
another threshold the policy is simply no longer applicable.  This can 
even apply to AfDs.  A collaborative system needs to respect group 
wisdom, and the fact that group wisdom will vary over time.  If having 
spoiler warnings really is such a dumb idea it becomes important to 
trust that there will never be enough support to reach the reversal 
threshold.

How we establish thresholds remains an open question.  Suffice it to 
say  that adoption and reversal thresholds cannot be the same, or we 
would be building in a fundamental instability.

We really need to look at different ways of doing things.

Ec