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A fundamental misunderstanding of how decisions are made on the English Wikipedia.
by mukyu 15y ago
A fundamental misunderstanding of how decisions are made on the English Wikipedia.
- gwillen 15y agoThe author of this particular straw poll is likely to know a bit more about the workings of the English Wikipedia than you do...
- mukyu 15y agoI was referring to this graph and the premise that it supports. Also, Jimbo has very little to do with the running of the English Wikipedia. He stepped down as a leader of it because of how often his actions were sharply criticized by the community that he was out of touch with. Just because you co-founded something 10 years ago does not make you an expert on it.
- corin_ 15y agoThe graph shows how many people support/oppose this concept. And finding that out was Jimmy's aim here. Not to make a decision based on the resulting figures.
- _delirium 15y agoYes, though I think this exposes some scaling problems with wiki consensus when there are a ton of people interested and huge outside media interest as well. Straw polls aren't votes, but they function best as non-votes when there's, say, fewer than 50, maybe 100 people weighing in. Then the approach is something like: 1) call a straw poll; 2) people indicate their support or opposition and why, not just a "vote"; 3) eyeball the opinions to see if there's clear consensus for or against, and what the main reasons people have pro/con are; 4) try to revise the proposal to take into account the main opinions expressed in the straw poll; 5) iterate until either consensus, or you fall back on finally having a "real" vote among a few distilled options. That all works remarkably less well when there are hundreds of people weighing in.