[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[George Herbert]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
>> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>>> People agree and support the decision.
>>>>
>>> Fred, who are these people that are making these decisions and declaring
>>> that there in Community consensus, knowing that this "consensus" cannot be
>>> factually validated?
>
> on 2/1/11 10:34 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> It is in the nature of online collaborative communities that this
>> general question has no exact answer.
>>
>> This is fundamentally unsatisfying to a number of people, including
>> those who prefer various not-yet-universally-supported changes;
>> scientists, observers, critics, and journalists from outside the
>> community trying to understand or quantify it; many others.
>>
>> That's the way it works, though.
>>
>> I appreciate your point, which is that this way of doing things is
>> often infuriating, insane, or impossible to actually get anything done
>> in.  The reality is that we're there.  That's how Wikipedia works (for
>> whatever definition of "work" you care to apply to the state of the
>> project here, which you and others feel are unsatisfactory).
>
> George, it may be "how it works", but it also misleading - or worse. To
> state that any decision made in this manner is a "consensus of the Wikipedia
> Community" is fundamentally dishonest.

Consensus is the method which was chosen for Wikipedia to determine
things (in general).  Raw majority voting (or supermajority voting)
was intentionally not chosen.

It's entirely fine to point out that this leads to existential angst
over what consensus is, means, or how anyone ever determines it.  But
that's what we do, every day for the last 10 years.  Something worked,
at least some of the time.

You're looking for a deeper meaning (fair) and a way to legitimately
and concretely get approval for changes (fair to ask for) that gives
you an answer you feel was unambiguously arrived at.

We have no guarantee that the last clause will ever be satisfied under
the consensus system.  Some issues are uncontroversial and it's not
really challenged that consensus exists.  Some issues are very
controversial, and calling the consensus either way is ambiguous.

I understand and acknowledge that the ambiguity is a pain point for
you.  That is the system, for better or worse.  There is no magic
wand.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com