[Intlwiki-l] [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

[Larry Sanger]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> On 9/27/02 12:19 AM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> <snip> > Of course wiki isn't the best way to have back and forth
> discussions....
> > But it is a better way to develop consensus.

I'm not so sure.  Discussions on wiki, when they take the form of an
attempt to formulate a consensus document, are extremely susceptible to
one party framing a problem that is prejudicial (explicitly or subtly)
toward one point of view.  Then, if another party attempts to reframe the
problem posed by someone who insists strongly on getting his way, an edit
war ensues.  If that were how we settled all our policy issues, it would
be way too easy for a single person to have undue influence over the
policy-making process, and for an alleged consensus actually to be bogus.

Of course, this isn't the case when one uses the page basically as a
mailing list thread, as talk: pages often are.  But then it's the fact
that the wiki page resembles a mailing list that "levels the playing
field."

The nice thing about a mailing list is that nobody gets to frame a
problem; each participant is free to contribute and analyze.  (And other
participants are also free to delete messages without reading them; their
length doesn't dominate the page the way that enormous replies on a wiki
page does.)

So, while I still think Meta-Wikipedia still has a useful function (e.g.,
I'm glad I have an appropriate place for all my 'pedia-related essays),
I'm rather glad that a lot of the discussion has moved onto the mailing
lists.

Larry