W11. Discuss Reagle's Chapter 5 - Clément Chevallier

To explain the question of consensus in Wikipedia, the author uses the case of disambiguation. Often, some articles have a similar title and it can create an issue. Users of Wikipedia are supposed to discuss and reason together to decide what is the best solution. So the ultimate goal is to get a consensus. However, there was a disagreement. Some users prefer the use as needed system, some others prefer the ‘consistent suffix’ system.

To seek consensus, you should discuss and the deliberation to arrive at the best possible solution takes time. Who is invited to this discussion ? Ideally, everybody is invited to the discussion but the risk of too much openness is to attract trolls. Sometimes, recalcitrant people refuse the decision and keep other Wikipedians from getting a consensus.
Despite all these problems, consensus is the favorite method of making decisions at Wikipedia. In comparaison, "voting and polling are evil" for many users because they discourage consensus, they are considered as unfair and cause confusion. In addition, some users accuse the opennes of Wikipedia to bias the framing of the pool and stuff the ballot box.

After reading the article, I looked the Wikipedia page about concensus. One part strikes me: "certain policies and decisions (...) are outside the purview of editor consensus". So even in a system based on concensus, there are some decisions which must be taken by a superior entity. I think it's an interesting point to discuss.


Clément Chevallier.

Comments

  1. Solène HMay 17, 2018 at 8:29 AM

    I think there is a "superior entity" to take some decisions and it is important in each organization. In the case of Wikipedia, it is necessary to have administrators who solve some problems and moderate some inappropriate remarks from Wikipedia users.

    ReplyDelete

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