[Wikipedia-l] Minority/majority deadlock (help!)

Gutza gutza at moongate.ro
Sun Aug 1 14:53:18 UTC 2004


Ok, so it finally came down to this: a few people say that some thing 
has to be done one way, while many other people say it has to be done in 
another way. Whatever the discussion, whatever the results of a poll, 
whatever the arguments, the minority can always say that they are being 
trampled upon if things are done the way the majority prefers. The net 
result is that no amount of effort can result in breaking this deadlock 
in any civilised way, because the very fact that a majority thinks 
differently than the minority is being challenged.

Imposing the majority's view over the minority will no doubt result in 
some negative emotional responses from the minority, but isn't this 
preferable to having negative emotional responses from the majority? If 
I rename that article I will be both bashed about for "making unilateral 
decisions" (they are not unilateral, the majority supports this 
decision, but the minority will scream that they are being treated 
unfair, as explained above). Also, this would most certainly result in a 
bloody edit war (well, "renaming war" would be the proper term in this 
case, but I'll use "edit war" for consistency).

So, what are the Wikipedia recommendations in this case? Danutz, 
practically the sole proponent of the minority view on the Romanian 
Wikipedia, explicitly refuses to acknowledge any support /at all/ for 
the majority (BOR spelling) on this mailing list, in the 
"Minority/majority question" thread. The trick is that the Romanians' 
views are by default tainted with POV in his opinion, therefore he will 
not accept any decision made by the majority on the Romanian Wikipedia. 
He seems however somewhat willing to accept as NPOV the decision of 
other Wikipedians.

Is there any reasonable way to settle this in an objective, quantizable 
way (for instance with a poll) on other Wikipedias? Here is what Danutz 
is calling for (translated from 
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discu%C5%A3ie:Isus_Cristos which is in 
Romanian): "I propose [to decide on the main spelling by] asking someone 
who can preserve NPOV, from several international Wikipedias, with 
experience in such problems, not only the English one (I propose the 
Portuguese, Spanish, French and German), but not to the Arbitration 
Committee which you [, Gutza] are a member of."

Personally I find these requests unreasonable, but at the end of the day 
there are three possible solutions to this problem:
1) Status quo, the minoritarian version is preserved with the current 
spelling both for the naming and in the article, probably with a note 
acknowledging the majority spelling;
2) I or anyone else renames and changes the spelling in the article, 
inserting a note acknowledging the minority spelling;
3) All of Danutz's requests are granted and we act based on the outcome 
of that vote.

Both 1) and 2) will result in flames, edit wars, protection wars (both 
Danutz and I are administrators), and probably banning users. I don't 
find this reasonable either. So, what do we do? You people are the only 
hope for a peaceful solution, whichever it may be. So please answer and 
make suggestions, we would both appreciate that! Thank you for your 
patience and interest.

Have a nice Sunday!
Gutza





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