[WikiEN-l] Anonymous page creation will be reenabled on English Wikipedia.

[Oldak Quill]

On 27/10/2007, RLS <evendell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Charlotte Webb wrote:
> > On 10/26/07, RLS <evendell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Out of curiosity, was this discussed or presented to the community at
> >> large before a decision was made?
> >
> > Hopefully you realize any such discussion would reach a perpetual
> > stalemate, and nothing would ever happen. And then the explicit "lack
> > of consensus" would be used as an argument against any "let's just be
> > bold and try it" maneuvers, even by people a handful of people who
> > would otherwise support such an action. There has to be a word for
> > this phenomenon, but I can't find it at the moment.
>
> I wasn't trying to assert any view on the productivity of such a
> discussion.  Rather, it was a roundabout way of saying "you know, this
> is why people think there's a cabal." Those who are paranoid about that
> sort of thing would have had a field day with GM's original message, and
> probably wouldn't have paid any attention to the ensuing discussion that
> he felt this was the most effective way to get action started, and that
> no "cabalized" decision had been made.
>
> If one were concerned about en.wp's culture *appearing* open to everyone
> to participate in the decision-making process, one wouldn't present
> proposals that way.  That's all.

On the contrary, I think a community that allows anyone to make
proposals regardless of their role, status, &c. is freer than your
alternative (freedom of opportunity in a very non-political sense).
All it requires is initiative - the community weeds out unpopular
proposals if they are done on-wiki and in a transparent way.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)