[WikiEN-l] Resolving conflicts and reaching consensus

[Ian Woollard]

I think that the major problem with the software is that it assumes
that things are true/false. In the real world shades of gray are much
more common. There seems to be no way to have things that oppose
something and other things that boost it.

I'm also very unconvinced by the percentages, they seem to be
pseudo-information rather than anything meaningful. Possibly using
averages of values assigned by people might be a better approach or
something.

The general idea of the tool is probably otherwise a good one however.


On 17/04/2010, Peter Tesler <vptes1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Many times something that's already has been concluded/proven can and
> should be used in future discussions. For example, if we've reached a
> consensus that there's no oxygen on the surface on the moon, we can
> bring that point up next time someone suggests sending astronauts to
> the moon without oxygen-carrying space suits. Other times, an existing
> conclusion should not be used and an exception should be made. The
> ideagraph accommodates both of these situations - you can reuse
> existing statements, but you can also refute a particular reuse of a
> statement. And no debate is ever closed - if you have more information
> to contribute, you can jump into an exiting debate at any time.
>
>> 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.
>
> There is no voting on the graph - the percentages you see represent
> the fraction of the past 24 hours that the statement was green. This
> merely shows if there is a "lean" in a debate. A percentage of 100%,
> however, is a good indication that a consensus has been reached or is
> close to being reached. The decision not to have voting built into the
> software came directly from the Wikipedian philosophy you mentioned
> above - i.e. tallies do not prove a logical argument right or wrong.
>
> More info: http://thegraph.org/about
>
>> 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.
>
> Very true. Which is why anyone can jump into an old debate at any time
> and refute something that was previously thought to be true. It's
> important to note that the ideagraph is very much UNLIKE an online
> forum - it is a network (directed graph) of logical statements that
> refute one another. Refuting one statement has somewhat of a ripple
> effect. Each user can focus on the local debate surrounding a
> particular issue and the software calculates the truth values of
> everything that's connected (which I guess one day can be billions of
> other statements).
>
> Thanks for all the feedback guys!
>
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-- 
-Ian Woollard