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

[WereSpielChequers]

We seem to be confusing several separate issues here.

1) Directive versus self organising organisations.
Those who believe that centrally controlled, planned organisations are
inherently superior to and less chaotic than decentralised self
organising organisations where power is devolved and individuals
empowered to make decisions will tend to have a problem with the way
Wikipedia runs itself. In political terms I see this as a Marxist
Leninist/Liberal divide, I don't know why there are still people out
there who think that a planned organisation with a strong leader
should outperform unplanned but cooperating groups of empowered
people, but there are people with that view and they will tend to
think of Wikipedia as chaotic, and consider chaotic a criticism. I'm
not convinced that real world political ideologies have a good match
with Wikipolitics, but I will happily admit to being a Liberal in my
instinctive assumption that "strong leadership" is more often a
disadvantage than an advantage.

2) Consensus versus Wikipedia's interpretation of consensus.

Consensus building requires all or most participants to be willing to
discuss their differences and seek common ground. It fails when people
realise that to frustrate change all they need achieve is a blocking
minority.

3) Direct versus indirect Democracy
Direct democracy has the disadvantage that it doesn't scale up as well
as indirect democracy, and there is an argument that at one point EN
wiki was getting too big to work as a direct democracy, however as the
active editorship and active admin cadres are both dwindling that
argument is losing strength. Direct democracy has the failing that a
small minority of the clueless can give you inconsistent decisions; If
49% want better services and are willing to pay the taxes to fund it,
and 49% would like to have better public services but not if that
means paying the taxes that would be needed, and 2% want low taxes and
better services, then in a direct democracy the 2% win both referenda
and the idea of referenda takes a knock, whilst in an indirect
democracy the 2% are the swing voters who decide which of the other
options wins.

But it does have the advantage that you have a group of people from
the whole community who are empowered to rule on intractable local
disputes such as climate change and various nationalistic arguments.
Whilst depending on the people who turn up risks driving off all but
the fundamentalists.

The case for more indirect, elected democracy in Wikipedia would
either depend on the argument that the community has scenarios where
existing procedures have produced inconsistent results, or where the
only people who turn up are involved, or that this is an acceptable
way to get round the drawbacks of consensus.

My own experience of getting change on Wikpedia has been mixed, I was
involved in BLP prod, one of the biggest recent changes, and little
but remarkably uncontentious changes such as the death anomalies
project - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-09-13/Sister_projects
Some of my other attempts to change Wikipedia have been rather less
successful.  So I've got a lot of sympathy with those who want change
that has majority but not consensus support, much fellow feeling with
those who support a change but accept that the community doesn't agree
with them, and rather less sympathy with those who try to impose what
they believe is right even if they know that the majority oppose them.

WereSpielChequers

On 2 February 2011 02:59, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 2/1/11 9:22 PM, Fred Bauder at fredbaud at fairpoint.net wrote:
>
>>
>>> Fred, please re-read what I said. The Council would be a body elected by
>>> the
>>> Community. How is that arbitrary? Why would their be loss of volunteer
>>> and
>>> donor support? And, I specifically said that the Council would have
>>> nothing
>>> to do with day-to-day editing or behavioral disputes. Where is the loss
>>> of
>>> independence?
>>>
>>> Marc
>>
>> You were talking about something else. However even the council is a bad
>> idea with anonymous editors electing it. We have no idea what kind of
>> skulduggery is involved. Secret ballot by anonymous people; what kind of
>> sense does that make?
>>
> Your use of the word "skulduggery" in this context is very telling, Fred.
>
> Marc
>
>
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