[WikiEN-l] Request to Wikipedians for BBC Documentary

[Kat Walsh]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Charles
Matthews<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Well said. That debate was resolved back in the days when we actually
>> reached consensus occasionally! There are too many people for that to
>> work, these days. However hard you try, you never find a solution that
>> everyone will accept.
>>
> Hmmm, that seems to assume consensus = no yelling, rather than 80%
> support or whatever. As if special interest groups can always block
> change. (Now that rings a bell, but we need to be careful about the
> retrospective history.)
>
> Charles

4 out of 5 Wikipedians agree, consensus = 80%.

What exactly counts as "consensus" is another industrial-sized can of
worms. I think we slipped into "rough consensus" long ago, and are now
drifting into supermajorities as a rough substitute, with occasional
exceptions. Lots of people wanting something doesn't necessarily make
them right, though it's often a decent guide to it...

-Kat

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