[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Governance reform

[Andrew Gray]

2008/4/24 michael west <michawest at gmail.com>:

> Forgive me - is this some kind of English phrased in a way  many editors
> would not understand? or am I think/stupid?

It's stilted, but it seems comprehensible enough to me. However, have
a quick precis of each bit...

> *Wikipedia's traditional governance model has failed to scale adequately
> with the project's growth, and has become incapable of operating effectively
> in a project orders of magnitude larger than it was at the time the model
> was adopted.*

a) The system of government, control, discussion etc that we have doesn't scale.

b) [Because it doesn't scale] it has now reached a point where it's
broken down, because we're so damned big.

> *Internally-motivated policy formation has effectively stagnated. The last
> major changes to the main body of policy--the BLP policy and the non-free
> content policy--were both essentially imposed from the outside, due to
> external pressure on the project. Major internally-driven policy proposals,
> such as the attribution policy, have failed to result in anything but the
> predictable "no consensus" outcome.*

a) The community has basically stopped being able to change policy in
any significant way.

b) The last major changes to happen to the way we do things were the
BLP and fair-use policy changes, and they were basically Orders From
On High, not changes originated by the community.

c) Any attempts by the community to make major policy changes just end
up stalling due to the fact that it's very hard to get consensus; see
a).

> *This is, in some sense, inevitable in a project with a perpetually open set
> of individuals available to participate. Policy debate becomes, in most
> cases, nothing more than an endurance contest between those who wish to
> effect some change and those who wish to retain the status quo; and, so long
> as those opposed to any proposal are sufficiently dedicated and sufficiently
> vocal, they can keep the debate going without any effective means being
> available to force a decision. The few attempts to do so by means of a
> general referendum have proven ineffective.*

a) Meaningful consensus is hard when you have lots of people, more of
them turning up all the time, and no real consistency in that
population.

b) Our current system means that anyone who doesn't like a change can
basically stall it forever, with no way to easily move on.

c) We've tried mass votes to get past this, but they haven't worked.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk