[Foundation-l] Discussion duration and the SOPA shutdown

[George Herbert]

I would normally start by floating this on wikien-L or on-wiki at the
usual places, but the time for that has passed and thus I am going to
drop this on the Foundation, who I believe are responsible for the
particular problem here.

On the English language Wikipedia, there has been a longstanding
discussion / dispute / evolving consensus on how long is appropriately
long for major site policy discussions.  For varying areas, there are
no limits to discussion period, a week or longer, 3 days, 2 days, 24
hrs, and so forth.

It's generally held - in my opinion - that major events or changes
should be on the order of a week or longer.

I bring this up because I left town on the 10th aware of various SOPA
discussions but unaware of an organized intention to blackout on the
18th, and returned to editing today to find that it's tomorrow and
that it's all decided now, thank you very much, your opinion no longer
desired.

It appears that this was done to match the other organizations'
pre-announced Jan 18th blackouts.  It also appears that this was
instigated on or around the 13th by Foundation staff.

In the intervening days, someone appears to have decided without
seeking consensus that 3 days was enough time to discuss and decide,
announced such, had the discussion, called a consensus (with,
admittedly, most of the active editing community participating) and
started implementation.

It's not clear from reading stuff who decided that 3 days was enough
time for the final formatted discussion and consensus to be valid.  It
is clear that the timing that led up to it was discussions the
Foundation initiated in detail, with specified date etc, less than a
week from the proposed date.

I do not see in any of that which came before an awareness of
length-of-policy-discussion issues or preferences, a meta-discussion
about how long to discuss, etc.  It appears and seems likely (much
less, assumptions of good faith) that this was simply overlooked.

That said, this is a Big Deal, and it appears that the Foundation
collectively blew it on that aspect.  Elements of the community also
blew it.

The community has been trending downwards in acceptance of shorter
discussions on things.  To a degree this is useful - we need the
ability to make timely decisions.  To a degree this is harmful - lack
of ability for all involved to see and participate due to timings;
lack of depth of discussion and reflection.  It's a dynamic and
evolving standard.  But it's a standard, and should not be casually
ignored.

I would like to bring this point to the Foundation - staff and board -
and ask that you understand that on the occasion that you want to push
for a content or onwiki policy change and ask for community consensus
on things, that you need to make proper allowances for time for
discussion.  Ideally, it should be enough time to frame a discussion,
have a discussion within the framework amounting to a week or more,
and then find consensus and implement.  This would normally amount to
something approximating 2 weeks of lead time or longer.  This was not
a policy or operational emergency, justifying either
fix-first-then-discuss or a much shortened discussion.  Everyone knew
back in December that people at other sites were planning or
discussing the 18th.  If the Foundation had any inkling it was going
to intervene and drive this, it should have been planning ahead of
time.

Thank you.


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