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I know I can look this up but can you expand a little bit on "instead of a pure vote, structure discussion...". What's the actual hard decider? Like for page e

I know I can look this up but can you expand a little bit on "instead of a pure vote, structure discussion...". What's the actual hard decider? Like for page edits if there's a conflict it basically escalates up the hierarchy right? If there's no consensus what happens in this admin/bureaocrat thing? Who decides what constitutes consensus?

tux3 8y ago
No problem, I'm happy to explain, but this is just my own understanding so you may still want to look it up for the fine details! The main idea is that because it's not a formal vote, there's isn't supposed to be a hard threshold for passing. Now in practice >75% of support almost always shows strong consensus, and will result in the request being a clear-cut accept. Similarly, if you get 65% oppositions, chances are your request can be closed without further considerations. But what's important to keep in mind is that commenters are expected to explain the reason for their position, it's not just a +1/-1 system. If several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently, that's more important than the raw numbers. When there's no clear consensus, generally your request will be postponed for a couple day until issues are resolved, or eventually fail. (In close cases a public chat with the Bureaucrats — the people responsible for enforcing the decision of the community — sometimes takes place to clear things up, but it's unheard of for crats to go against the opinion of the community) >Like for page edits if there's a conflict it basically escalates up the hierarchy right? It's not supposed to, really. If there's a conflict, we would really like everyone involved to go calmly discuss it in the article's Talk page with the community. No one owns an article, no one who follows the rules has more right to edit it than anyone else. When that fails and people cannot cooperate at all, it sadly has to escalate and can end in bans for the involved users. >Who decides what constitutes consensus? In the end the definition of what constitutes consensus is defined by the community, and that includes anyone that feels like starting a discussion and challenging the status quo. Wikipedia has no firm rules, just guidelines and policies that people have and continue to argue about endlessly. That's the whole problem with Wikipedia, isn't it? It's full of messy, complicated, imperfect people.
- mirimir 8y ago
  > But what's important to keep in mind is that commenters are expected to explain the reason for their position, it's not just a +1/-1 system. If several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently, that's more important than the raw numbers. I've read a lot of talk pages. Mainly about articles that had been deleted, I admit. But anyway, "explain the reason for their position" seems to all-too-often devolve into legalistic debates over rules, procedures and so on. And "several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently" seems to mostly be about gang warfare, not about the merits. So basically, people who don't play the game well, and don't go along, tend to get banned. It'd be far better if those who disagree with the consensus could stand aside, and have their own dissenting fork.
- bjourne 8y ago
  I'd say that your explanation is correct in theory, but not in practice. On some issues people can not see eye to eye and then it is simple majority votes that decide topic matters. For example, I used to edit articles about international law on Wikipedia. Most of the edits were accepted no problem, but there are some countries that tends to violate a lot of international law. Those countries also have a huge amount of supporters on Wikipedia. Supporters who aren't really interested in international law, but are very interested in improving their countries reputation online. Long arguments doesn't convince these editors at all and due to their sheer number can block any edit they don't like. Finding other editors interested in international law to combat this is impossible for two reasons. First, not many people are interested in legal topics and second, conflicts are risky. If you go up against "the consensus" too many times, you'll be labelled a trouble-maker and will have a harder time arguing your points of view in the future. The only real solution is to network as hell and try to make allies ("you scratch my back I scratch yours") on Wikipedia. But that takes years so the only people who do it are those who get paid for their time or those who are truly obsessed zealots.
  - tux3 8y ago
    When it comes down to conflicts over opinions, like whether we should write that X country's behavior technically counts as violating international law or not, consider that both sides arguing their views are in the wrong! The role of editors is emphatically NOT to write their objective, honest assessment of a subject. It is to find reputable sources, and state whatever opinions they express. Sources type things down; You report their views. The only point left to argue is what sources are reputable, which source to pick other which. Only that's a much more productive debate to have since there's often a lot of precedent (the same controversial sources tend to come up again in different arguments about different topics), there are pretty clear guidelines to fall back to, and since it's not about a very narrow topic it's easy to bring outside people to the discussion. I can't claim that this will magically solve every content dispute, clearly not, but if you're stuck arguing opinions on niche topics it's a good first step!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tetromino_ 8y ago
One way is for an admin who is not party to the conflict to summarize the presented arguments, existing rules and precedents, and write a decision. Serious irresolvable conflicts are decided by the Arbitration Committee for the particular language edition of Wikipedia, and the committee's decisions are binding. Each language editions of Wikipedia has its own slightly different take on how the Arbitration Committee is selected and how it makes decisions, but the general gist is that commissioners are highly active editors (not necessarily administrators) who are elected for a limited term by a vote of active editors.

tux3 8y ago

No problem, I'm happy to explain, but this is just my own understanding so you may still want to look it up for the fine details! The main idea is that because it's not a formal vote, there's isn't supposed to be a hard threshold for passing. Now in practice >75% of support almost always shows strong consensus, and will result in the request being a clear-cut accept. Similarly, if you get 65% oppositions, chances are your request can be closed without further considerations. But what's important to keep in mind is that commenters are expected to explain the reason for their position, it's not just a +1/-1 system. If several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently, that's more important than the raw numbers. When there's no clear consensus, generally your request will be postponed for a couple day until issues are resolved, or eventually fail. (In close cases a public chat with the Bureaucrats — the people responsible for enforcing the decision of the community — sometimes takes place to clear things up, but it's unheard of for crats to go against the opinion of the community) >Like for page edits if there's a conflict it basically escalates up the hierarchy right? It's not supposed to, really. If there's a conflict, we would really like everyone involved to go calmly discuss it in the article's Talk page with the community. No one owns an article, no one who follows the rules has more right to edit it than anyone else. When that fails and people cannot cooperate at all, it sadly has to escalate and can end in bans for the involved users. >Who decides what constitutes consensus? In the end the definition of what constitutes consensus is defined by the community, and that includes anyone that feels like starting a discussion and challenging the status quo. Wikipedia has no firm rules, just guidelines and policies that people have and continue to argue about endlessly. That's the whole problem with Wikipedia, isn't it? It's full of messy, complicated, imperfect people.

mirimir 8y ago
> But what's important to keep in mind is that commenters are expected to explain the reason for their position, it's not just a +1/-1 system. If several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently, that's more important than the raw numbers. I've read a lot of talk pages. Mainly about articles that had been deleted, I admit. But anyway, "explain the reason for their position" seems to all-too-often devolve into legalistic debates over rules, procedures and so on. And "several people raised an important issue or found some serious problem with the way you've contributed recently" seems to mostly be about gang warfare, not about the merits. So basically, people who don't play the game well, and don't go along, tend to get banned. It'd be far better if those who disagree with the consensus could stand aside, and have their own dissenting fork.
bjourne 8y ago
I'd say that your explanation is correct in theory, but not in practice. On some issues people can not see eye to eye and then it is simple majority votes that decide topic matters. For example, I used to edit articles about international law on Wikipedia. Most of the edits were accepted no problem, but there are some countries that tends to violate a lot of international law. Those countries also have a huge amount of supporters on Wikipedia. Supporters who aren't really interested in international law, but are very interested in improving their countries reputation online. Long arguments doesn't convince these editors at all and due to their sheer number can block any edit they don't like. Finding other editors interested in international law to combat this is impossible for two reasons. First, not many people are interested in legal topics and second, conflicts are risky. If you go up against "the consensus" too many times, you'll be labelled a trouble-maker and will have a harder time arguing your points of view in the future. The only real solution is to network as hell and try to make allies ("you scratch my back I scratch yours") on Wikipedia. But that takes years so the only people who do it are those who get paid for their time or those who are truly obsessed zealots.
- tux3 8y ago
  When it comes down to conflicts over opinions, like whether we should write that X country's behavior technically counts as violating international law or not, consider that both sides arguing their views are in the wrong! The role of editors is emphatically NOT to write their objective, honest assessment of a subject. It is to find reputable sources, and state whatever opinions they express. Sources type things down; You report their views. The only point left to argue is what sources are reputable, which source to pick other which. Only that's a much more productive debate to have since there's often a lot of precedent (the same controversial sources tend to come up again in different arguments about different topics), there are pretty clear guidelines to fall back to, and since it's not about a very narrow topic it's easy to bring outside people to the discussion. I can't claim that this will magically solve every content dispute, clearly not, but if you're stuck arguing opinions on niche topics it's a good first step!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tetromino_ 8y ago

One way is for an admin who is not party to the conflict to summarize the presented arguments, existing rules and precedents, and write a decision. Serious irresolvable conflicts are decided by the Arbitration Committee for the particular language edition of Wikipedia, and the committee's decisions are binding. Each language editions of Wikipedia has its own slightly different take on how the Arbitration Committee is selected and how it makes decisions, but the general gist is that commissioners are highly active editors (not necessarily administrators) who are elected for a limited term by a vote of active editors.