Fwd: Article ownership Re: avoiding forks (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?)

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:04:05 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:

> More people not tied to the original dispute does two things. First, it
> takes personality conflicts off the table, which are a regrettable part
> of most edit wars. Second, it reduces the ability of groups to harden
> into place by getting closer to a statistical sampling of opinion. 2
> people self selected to edit an article probably have views which are
> unusual, that's why they chose to edit the article. Ten or more is much
> more likely to reflect the broad range.

Sounds to me like a base for even more conflict. Everyone comes in
with his or her own opinion, and instead of finding a compromise
between 2 opinions, we suddenly have to find a compromise between 10.

> Importantly, this would help to
> reduce the incentive for each side to bring in friends and continue the
> revert war.

I don't see how. If there are more people discussing, it becomes only
more important to have more people speaking for your POV.

> If a larger group of wikipedians can't come to a consensus, then it
> clearly is time for a more formal RFC to be written. But again, the
> more people not party to the original dispute, the more likely that RFC
> is to focus on the actual issues.

And then? What does an RFC do? I don't see how this helps. There will
be yet more people coming in. If you're lucky they all agree with you.
More likely, some will agree with you, some with the other, some with
neither. And then? We still have the same conflict, but we have gone
from 2 to 10 to 20 people involved. I don't see how this resolves
anything.

Andre Engels