[WikiEN-l] Meta-discussion: Groupthink

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name>:

> I find it interesting, and a little distressing, that there seems to be a
> "groupthink" phenomenon on this list (and also sometimes on Wikipedia
> itself).  I saw it just now in the discussion of an expulsion from this list.
> When it was first brought up for comment, there was a "me-too" chorus of
> agreement with the ban.  Then, a day later, I posted my dissenting
> commentary (which I actually wrote yesterday, but failed to successfully post
> due to a misconfigured mail program... getting outbound mail sent while on
> vacation and using various different access providers is a pain with all the
> security moves and port blocking tossing up hoops to be navigated), and
> suddenly there were several other dissenting views following in close
> succession.
>
> One can make all sorts of hypotheses to try to explain such things; perhaps
> people are timid about expressing their opinion unless somebody else has
> already broken the ice in their direction; perhaps people of firm convictions
> prefer to be quiet about them unless they're sure they have other supporters
> around so they won't be left to twist in the wind alone; perhaps people
> without convictions of their own are eager to find bandwagons to jump on so
> they'll take up a view that just happens to agree with whoever else posted
> last.  Whichever it may be (or a combination of these and other factors), it
> doesn't seem like the healthiest thing for honest discussion of views 
> (even if
> sometimes the outcome might wind up agreeing with my own view).

At least in my case I wasn't paying that much attention to the matter. Once I
saw your email I went back and read the exchanges (which I previously had only
skimmed). I don't know if that is groupthink per se. It doesn't require 
a group
think problem for people to develop opinions on a matter based on a pointer or
new set of evidence.