W11 Reagle’s fifth chapter : consensus

This article tackles the issue of the difficulty to obtain consensus when reaching the point of decision making.
We know that Wikipedia leaves many freedom to its users including the naming, editing and creation of the pages. However some conflict can arise, some of the solution are the following disambigation links, the talk page, and nominating the article to deletion/ renaming.
A discussion engage, a consensus is reached when the majority agree on it. When the case is difficult and there is no obvious majority someone from the arbitration committee is appointed to assist and ultimately lead the discussion to a favorable ending.
However determining when a consensus is reached is quite hard, that’s why wikipedia’s decision are usually not made by polling (which depends on who shows up on what day) but based on a system of good reason.

Consensus is a hard word to define, it is really interesting in the conclusion, consensus is defined as « one of the three states that can be reached at the end of a discussion after all parties have become thoroughly fed up with it » which i think summarize quite Well the notion.


As seen in this article consensus is a pillar of wikipedia’s functionning, enabling the wikipedia users to work in autonomy as long as this principle is respected. But it is a process that can be infinite, if someone is not satisfied with no result he can nominate the article again. Or what if the consensus doesn’t upgrade the article but downgrade it, can it be nominated again ? How to evaluate the result of these decisions ? 

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