[WikiEN-l] Difficulty making structural changes to WP due to human nature?

[WereSpielChequers]

Yes the pedia is somewhat ossified and change in many areas is difficult to
achieve. You only have to look at the various attempts to reform RFA to see
that.

Of course there are many possible changes that fail because they only have
minority support, and while it might be frustrating for the minority who
advocate such schemes, it is much easier to accept losing an argument when
you are clearly in a minority. Where the process becomes more problematic is
when you have a blocking minority preventing change. To my mind consensus
based decision making requires a high proportion of participants to be
willing to consider other people's viewpoints and seek a consensus solution.
Where this becomes frustrating is when you have dogmatic minorities who
don't need to consider compromise because they have sufficient numbers to
block any change.

Where consensus becomes pernicious is when a minority can achieve change
against the will of the majority, we see that in the ratcheting of standards
at RFA; Once we have over 30% of RFA !voters who want an additional hurdle
to adminship then that change has happened, and the de facto bar for
adminship has risen a further notch. Most of our current admins went through
RFA in an era where 3,000 manual edits and 12 months tenure were far more
than one needed to be taken as a serious candidate. If you ran today with
only 12 months tenure you might get through, but you risk being told that
you are not yet really part of our community. By process of candidates
failing to get consensus for promotion the de facto standards at RFA ratchet
upwards. That standards inflation has not come about because of a series of
consensus or even majority based decisions to change the criteria at RFA, it
has come about because minorities emerge who are willing to oppose
candidates who don't meet certain thresholds of tenure and editcountitis.



WereSpielChequers