4 ms·

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

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!
- bjourne 8y ago
  Unfortunately it doesn't work when people can't agree on definitions. For example, Wikipedia has lots of pages listing all entities of class X (all these list of pages). Who decides if an entity is of class X or not? In my opinion that would be decided by acclaimed experts on X. Wikipedians routinely disagree and will assign entities to class X of their own volition even if no support can be found among acclaimed experts. They will then challenge you to find a source claiming that the entity does NOT belong to class X, or else it should remain listed. That is of course almost always impossible because there aren't many experts out there spending their time publishing articles refuting Wikipedians misconceptions!

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!

bjourne 8y ago
Unfortunately it doesn't work when people can't agree on definitions. For example, Wikipedia has lots of pages listing all entities of class X (all these list of pages). Who decides if an entity is of class X or not? In my opinion that would be decided by acclaimed experts on X. Wikipedians routinely disagree and will assign entities to class X of their own volition even if no support can be found among acclaimed experts. They will then challenge you to find a source claiming that the entity does NOT belong to class X, or else it should remain listed. That is of course almost always impossible because there aren't many experts out there spending their time publishing articles refuting Wikipedians misconceptions!