[WikiEN-l] Meta-discussion: Groupthink

[thespian at sleepingcat.com]

> 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.

Since I've never been accused of being timid about my opinions, I'll chalk
it up to the fact that, as the Canadian in the office this week here in
Boston, I've been getting all kinds of lovely overtime hours bestowed on
me as people say, 'Hey, do you think you could cover....'. I didn't have
time to actually articulate it and actually type it, but it had occurred
to me.

Frankly, I think in any group of a few thousand people, we get about the
normal amount of acquiescence and people who say 'me too' simply because
sometimes, someone else has just expressed things they'd sort of thought.
Would you rather have said it and had no one say, 'That's been bothering
me, too?' and have no idea that other people were in agreement? (that
sounds snarkier than intended, but I really mean it; it's a high volume
list, some people might prefer that. But I'd rather have the volume and
see when people want to chime in, even if it's just to say, 'Hey, he's
right.'

Thes.