[WikiEN-l] Resolving conflicts and reaching consensus

[Ryan Delaney]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 4:38 AM, Peter Tesler <vptes1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone -
> This is a project presented at Wikipedia Day 2010 at NYU in New York
> last January..http://ideagra.ph
> We presented this as a way to discuss a few of the most
> complicated/controversial Wikimedia-related issues that haven't yet
> garnered a consensus. It was specifically designed to fix the current
> problems with Wikipedia's discuss pages (arguments get very long,
> complex, and messy).
>
> What makes a debate here different from one on a standard discuss page?
> Statements have a color (green/red) which represents their current
> state of consensus (something that's been refuted, for instance, is
> red). You can also re-use facts concluded in other debates by other
> people - thus allowing the work of debating/reasoning to be
> distributed among (potentially) billions of people.
>
> We've created a Wikipedia category for issues surrounding Wikipedia:
> http://ideagra.ph/1870
>
> We need your feedback...
>
> -Peter
>
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/ideagraph
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ideagraph/319390481771
>
>
>
The software looks pretty cool. Here are some of my concerns about it.

A common way to stifle discussion about nuance in any situation is to refer
to old discussions on similar ideas and say "we already discussed this and
got consensus". Keeping an ancient history of all past debates could cause a
single discussion to echo forward in time indefinitely. I don't think we
should feel bound by previous arguments, and there is never a point where
discussion cannot be re-opened.

Also, keeping track of percentages in "voting" has a way of obscuring the
actual arguments as not everyone's opinion is simply "up or down" on any
issue. For example, this is why we don't simply count votes in an AFD (at
least, we're not supposed to): We want to consider the weight of the
arguments and get a more abstract 'feel' for what consensus is, rather than
compiling a simple tally, because tallies aren't very informative.

Finally, and most importantly, sometimes we need to go over topics again to
address evolving editorial experience and new circumstances. It doesn't
bother me if that means occasionally re-inventing the wheel, because every
time we invent the wheel it might be a bit better or more well-suited to the
situation than last time. It's good to archive past discussion for later
reference (or to "catch up" new people who joined the conversation late),
but not because we don't want people to have to think, use their reasoning,
and engage in discussion on topics that someone else has discussed in the
past; we want that because the process of discussion itself is
enlightenment, even when the topic has been discussed in the past.

- causa sui