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False consensus

Wikipedia:POINT links to this article, with the text "false consensus", yet that is not explained here. Please fix. --Una Smith (talk) 07:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it would be an easy solution to document here what WP:POINT means by a false consensus. Is this an improvement? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:44, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Welcoming comments

I've posted an essay at Wikipedia:Pocket Consensus and would like some feedback. Please comment on the essay at the article's talk page.--Paul McDonald (talk) 02:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

So what is consensus?

This key Wikipedia policy article as currently written crucially fails to specify what constitutes a consensus. Is it a unanimous or a majority agreement of some community ? And what is the relevant community ? Dictionary definitions of consensus typically say it is either unanimity or else majoritarian agreement. So it is clearly important to decide which it is. But such definitions also leave open the further question of whether it is at least a simple majority (i.e. at least 51%) or at least a great majority (i.e. two-thirds) of the relevant community. But the more basic problem here is the article’s failure to identify what the relevant community is.

Thus the Wikipedia fundamental policy of editing by consensus is surely in effect empirically empty, whatever all its rubrics about discussion and procedure ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.143.134.44 (talk) 17:00, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Adding another essay

I've created Wikipedia:What is consensus? to help the community understand what is a pretty tricky and nuanced concept. Consensus is definitely an art, and not a science. Feel free to chime in with comments. Feel free to WP:BOLDly change the essay I've created, although I might politely ask that you try to keep it in the same basic spirit I've tried to put forward. I'm even optimistic that some of what I've written in the essay is sensible and reasonable enough that it should be included right here at the policy page for WP:CONSENSUS. Randomran (talk) 01:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting, but founders on failure to define or identify what the relevant group is.--Logicus (talk) 17:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

I would like this added to the policy. I think it is consistent with the policy as it stands, and some of you may feel it is implicit. I think it needs to be explicit. My intention is not to change the policy to but to clarify it, because Wikipedia is very different from other organizations that work by consensus.

At Wikipedia, consensus as an ongoing process, not a specific achievement. This is because Wikipedia is different from other organizations that address an issue, make a decision, and move on. Wikipedia is an ongoing project: we consider all articles to be works in progress, no article is ever finished, and people are editing articles all the time. Under these conditions "consensus" does not signal unanimity, but rather a process through which people with very different views and interests collaborate. Consensus-based edition requires above all else a commitment to work with others. This commitment in requires two other commitments: a commitment to our core policies, because no matter how different our views those policies provide a shared point of reference and a framework for working together; and a commitment to explaining the reasoning behind our edits, a willingness to listen to the reasoning behind someone else's edits, and a willingness to seek a compromise when both sides are complying with policy. Someone who does not participate in this process cannot use the concept of "consensus" to exercise a veto-power over others' edits. Someone who does not participate in this process cannot reject someone else's edit and use "there is no consensus" as an explanation. Only if one is part of a consensus-building endeavor, only if one demonstrates a commitment to collaborating and compromising with others, within the framework of our policies, does their objections to an edit count as a failure to achieve consensus. When editing is especially contentions a poll can be useful; if all editors on a page agree, save one or two, most editors would agree that there is a consensus. But if editors are evenly divided or close to it, there is no consensus. At that point it is a good idea to call for a WP:Request for comment in order to draw more people into the discussion.

If people think this is reasonable but take issue with the wording I invite others to edit it until we have, uh, a consensus. I know I could put this in an essay but I think many editors, especially newbies, need real clarity about how "consensus" does not give any single editor veto-power over edits to an article. This is a real problem for many newbies, and the policy should address it, this is my intention. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that this proposal would require substantial work to make it useful and balanced, and I'm not entirely sure that it really adds anything.
Is it safe to assume that you're in a frustrating dispute at the moment? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
well, I have to admit that I think something along these lines would be useful to implement as policy. I've seen claims of consensus without discussion used far too frequently as a form of page-ownership (cave-man logic, e.g.: "we got to this cave first: you can say it's not our cave all you want, but if you change anything we're going to poke you with a pointy stick"). it makes for well-written but often deeply biased articles. sad state of affairs when it happens. --Ludwigs2 02:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Mostly disagree. This directly contradicts WP:SILENCE, WP:CCC. While it is common practice in some parts, it's also extremely pathological. Posting a request for comment on an already contentious poll is throwing oil on the fire. How hard are you trying to exceed Dunbar's number?

Typically when someone walks into a page via WP:BOLD they start out as the minority. By starting a poll, the on-page majority can freeze out the "newcomer". Over time, the number of these newcomers ends up larger than the people originally watching the page, and the disconnect with the community grows... until finally one of these (not so very) 'disruptive trolls' lists the page on *FD, and it gets deleted or shut down (most famous example is Wikipedia:Esperanza).

By calling too many people onto a page at once, the amount of organisation you need to do to keep them all working productively spirals out of control, and you will typically fail to reach consensus without a mediator. In this situation the people will end up roughly evenly divided due to simple statistics. It doesn't tell you anything about the situation.

These kinds of things make people believe that finding consensus must take months. In reality, if you're not making progress in a couple of hours, (or at worst days, if you happen to be in badly-aligned time zones) , something somewhere is b0rked.

summary:

  • many-to-one: Maybe nothing, maybe 12 angry men in progress.
  • 50/50 split: either continuation of 12 angry men, or someone fubared the invitations

Finally, all proposals fail. :-P We have sophisticated mechanisms for diffing texts and finding reliable middle ground. Be bold and use them.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 23:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with anything that Slrubenstein is proposing. However, I think it needs some work. Right now it doesn't seem to me to be written as policy. Rather, it is more like an essay. SLR: would you be willing to summarize in point form what you would like to see in the policy? I would certainly like an addition to the policy to make it more specific about what consensus is and how it is determined. I will propose something below. Sunray (talk) 23:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, consensus is not determined by polls. Nor is it determined by proposals. :-) Don't propose please. Just Edit. Let's see what you come up with.
But watch out, because the whole "proposal process" concept (which is to say, make a proposal, hold a poll, request for comments, etc) has been shown to have failed more often than that it has succeeded, and there is simply no way around that. :-P I've been killing proposals for a proposal process for about as long as I'm on wikipedia. (I do it the honest way, mind you, by showing why it has never worked, isn't working now, and probably is unlikely to work in the foreseeable future). I'm not sure why people clamp on to it so strongly, but it's definitely a perennial proposal.
On the other hand, the "edit process" (currently described at WP:CONSENSUS if all is well) has several million success stories behind it. How about we look at the process that actually works, before we decide to promote the perennial proposal instead?
(of course, if you use the edit process to try to put forward that proposals and polls and exceeding dunbars number and possibly violating the laws of physics actually all work... there's some catch-22-like humor in that ;-) )
--Kim Bruning (talk) 00:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC) short version: If I 'win' you'll have learned something new about consensus and hopefully become more empowered (win-win); if you make me lose, we both lose, because you'll have disenfranchised yourself and others by promoting a severely suboptimal practice (lose-lose). Welcome to non-zero sum reality ;-) . And you're doing it simply by following the wrong process from start. See the talk page archives for details on consensus process, insofar they're not listed on the page. There's a reason certain processes are not listed here ;-)
But note that I do agree with much of the text slrubenstein puts forward. (To put it in arbcom language: The 'findings' are good, it's just the 'remedies' that kinda suck ;-) ). Let me ponder about how to phrase that. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:56, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
That sounds great. I take your point about proposals. My particular concern would, perhaps, be better dealt with if I expressed it as a problem rather than a proposal. Since it is different than what SLR is talking about, above, I will start a new section. Sunray (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Determining consensus

I've referred countless people to WP:CON, but I must say, it doesn't always help. It's great when you have reasonable editors editing relatively harmoniously. My problem with it is that has little to say about consensus decision-making in conflict situations. For example, by the time things get to mediation, we usually have folks with fairly entrenched positions. It would be nice to think that they could just keep editing until they get something they can all live with. But often they are at a complete impasse. Think two different ethno-religious groups at odds over some description. It may come down to a word or a phrase but it is deadlock. Here's the problem.

Problem statement: Achieving consensus in conflict situations can be challenging. It is often helpful to have a relatively straight-forward decision rule. Consensus is not necessarily unanimity and it is distinguished from majority rule. It is inevitably a super majority When there is a deadlock, it is helpful to have a decision rule, e.g., two-thirds, three quarters or four fifths, majority.

I believe it would be helpful to have a section in the policy that addresses the need for an agreed upon decision rule and introduces the notion of super majority. Comments? Sunray (talk) 01:43, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Achieving consensus in conflict situations can be challenging, but there are a number of alternatives. Such as WP:RfC, WP:3 and if needs be WP:ANI. In addition we have our policies and guidlines WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and our policy here. In conflict situations were need Admins to step up to the plate and enforce policy and address the breeches. --Domer48'fenian' 08:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
If a policy needs enforcing on a regular basis, then perhaps it's not a policy (policies are our best practices documents. If you need to continuously force people to apply one such document against their will, maybe it really isn't such a good practice after all.) . Admins are not obliged to "enforce policy" (and are, in fact, encouraged to ignore all rules O:-) ) --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:13, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Sunray is far from alone in his belief. However, a codified Wikipedia:Supermajority is the antithesis of Wikipedia:Consensus. Counting numbers and isolating your opposition is contrary to negotiation and compromise, which is necessary for consensus building. -- SmokeyJoe (talk)10:24, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

IIRC Supermajority voting was originally mentioned here, and deliberately removed. To repeat the ancient story, we do not allow voting in the main namespace to prevent people voting on content issues, where they might decide that 2+2=5 or π=3 . Such voting has been observed to undermine NPOV, which is a foundation issue. Not all issues are quite as clear cut as the examples, things can be quite subtle, and you might not notice you've made an NPOV violation until some expert comes along later.

We did allow voting (supermajority, simple majority, it doesn't matter since it's all voting) in the other namespaces. Of course, people ended up carrying over the voting systems from the other namespaces into the main namespace. Oops.

In the end, we ended up using consensus everywhere, just for the sake of consistency.

As it turns out, this was a good idea.

Now as for contentious issues, you can certainly reach consensus on an NPOV position, you just need to know how. (one place to start is Wikipedia:Writing for the enemy, for instance). In fact, NPOV and the wiki-consensus system were pretty much designed to fit together, IIRC. I'd have to look up the details on WikiWikiWeb:WardsWiki sometime :-)

--Kim Bruning (talk) 13:56, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

The statement that "supermajority is the opposite of consensus" is problematic. Consensus is not necessarily unanimity. When the decision is not unanimous, it is, by definition, a supermajority. I realize that we cannot go back to requiring a supermajoity of a certain amount across the board. I am wondering whether the policy should talk about the need for a decision rule, which would then be determined by participants in specific cases—for example, in a particular forum or case (on the talk page of a particular article). Sunray (talk) 17:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I like the supermajority language because it emphasizes that unanimity will not always be achievable.
Fundamentally, the goal of unanimity assumes that all editors are rational adults with a primary interest in a properly referenced, neutral, encyclopedic article. This doesn't work in practice, as anyone that has worked on controversial topics can attest.
Imagine (a hypothetical example) an article like Schizophrenia and an editor that repeatedly deletes all positive mention of pharmaceutical treatments. You can "discuss" this to the point of putting tens of thousands of words on the talk page, but if a single editor's bottom line is that the article must never indicate even the smallest benefit from pharmaceutical treatments, then you can't actually reach a unanimous perspective. It is not possible for an article to simultaneously contain, and to not contain, a given piece of information.
If the editor then removes the "offensive" material each day with a polite talk page explanation, then you can't invoke SILENCE or declare that you've reached the sort of functional compromise in which the article isn't subject to an ongoing edit war. Ongoing edit war ≠ Consensus.
This page might benefit from some practical suggestions to the supermajority on constructing a "least offensive" version or acknowledging the controversy. To follow the above example, the appropriate information about pharmaceutical treatments should be included in the article, but it might also include a suitably referenced sentence about pharmaceutical treatments being opposed by various activists. While that would doubtless not be sufficient for our determined POV editor, it is something that the supermajority could do as a gesture of compromise while essentially imposing their version over the objections of the agenda-driven editor.
It also might benefit from an explanation that the point is to achieve consensus on how to best comply with Wikipedia's policies in the article, instead of how to most effectively promote various POVs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is not unanimity, supermajority, majority, or anything that can be measured by numbers. Consensus is about agreement, about modifying the proposal, often watering-down, to take account of all valid positions.

Unanimity gives absolute power to every individual to block. Supermajority allows for the partitioning and ignoring of a minority view. These decision rules undermine consensus building. Consensus is about weighing arguments, recognising opposing viewpoints, and collective judgment on the debate. The conclusion of a consensus building debate will necessarily be NPOV, our most important policy, which is why consensus works so well for wikipedia (when it works).

I do not think it is a good idea to even mention supermajority. Instead, we could note that minority opinions can only be ignored after they have been defeated by logical debate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:04, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

That's a useful way to put it. Logic wins out over majority or unanimity. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Would it be useful to look at how some consensus building organizations operate, and how they define consensus? I am thinking of ASTM International, for example. The essence of their process is (a) any voting member can vote and (b) negative votes must be accompanied by a written statement of reasons for the negative and remedies that would be acceptable. Addressing the reasons and adopting an acceptable remedy usually satisfies the negative voter. If not, there is an elaborate due process to ensure that minority voters are not being isolated, suppressed, bullied, alienated, overruled, or dictated to. I would say minority opinions can be defeated by logical debate; so can majority opinions, for that matter. Don't even mention ignoring. --Una Smith (talk) 05:35, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it would be very useful. It would be useful both here and in the mainspace entries Consensus and Consensus decision-making. Agreed, don't even mention ignoring. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:46, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
In guidelines for its technical committees, ASTM International defines consensus as the judgment arrived at through the balloting and review procedures of these regulations (web link to "Green Book" PDF). Those regulations incorporate by reference several other documents, including Bylaws. Most of the Bylaws concern openness, transparency, and timeliness of the process, but among them is this principle: Careful attention to minority opinions throughout the process. That principle corresponds to the Wikipedia principle of NPOV. --Una Smith (talk) 15:03, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

When consensus fails its voting or authority rule

29-Nov-2008: The term "consensus" is, by considering the alternative, a unanimous agreement. It is not possible to get someone's consent when they don't. (end of proof []). When consensus fails, someone will be left out, probably by WP:3RR "double-teaming" against one person who can't out-revert an opposing group. However, ideally, a clear definition would note that, when consensus fails, either everyone stops, or the group consents to vote (as, at least, a consensus on voting), or an authority figure makes the decision. Any other squirrelly warping of the word "consensus" becomes pages and years (has it already been that many years?) of weasel wording. Please stop the weaseling of the term "consensus" to mean a "wannabe joint agreement, but not quite, in which case, we declare consensus because it's sooo wiki-sounding" (did I say that out loud?). A consensus is a total joint agreement, at the time, perhaps by compromise among everyone, but anything else is a failed consensus, resolved by some other method. After reaching consensus, when a person sneaks back (as many people have) and reverts the group decision (without user-talk), that is a "violation of the consensus" (or "false consensus" if the person agreed while planning the revert). Anyway, please stop writing "87 paragraphs" about reaching a consensus, when there isn't one. You'll never get consensus, with me, to accept warped definitions about consensus, no matter how "clarified" by endless complification. A "consensus" is a unanimous agreement (see proof above), else seek another decision-making method. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:14, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, in consensus forms of government, "consensus" usually means some kind of uneasy truce in which holders of a minority view are willing to accept, or at least not actively block, a compromise offered by the majority. Consensus does not mean that everybody agrees, it means that everybody disagrees to about the same extent. "Consensus" does not mean "unanimity." <eleland/talkedits> 21:46, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

RfC on voting as a component of consensus

There is an ongoing Request for Comment at WT:Requested moves#Moving or renaming articles based on poll results. The aim of the RfC is to determine whether and to what extent a majority of editors can be seen to represent a consensus, in the context of page/article moves. Note that this is a policy and not a content issue/dispute. All considered opinions on the nature of consensus are welcome.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 03:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

insert/remove

ive seen it argued that one needs consensus to insert material and i have also seen it argued that one needs consensus to remove information. usually the argument winds up stating that consensus is only needed for one and not the other. whats the consensus on that? is it all just hogwash? i havent found any policy that says any of this. --Brendan19 (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about changes to Wikipedia policy and guideline pages, to regular articles, or to something else? (The kind of page matters.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:53, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
regular articles. thanks--Brendan19 (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
For regular articles you need a kind of practical consensus for both adding and removing material, except for removing controversial material about living people, because if you don't have some basic level of agreement in practice, then the next editor might just undo it all. However, there's no requirement to get everyone to agree in advance (See WP:BOLD), and if you're doing something sensible, then probably everyone will agree with you.
For adding material, you need consensus that the addition meets the verifiability rules and that it doesn't overemphasize something. That is, if you add something, and someone says that you failed to provide a reliable source to prove that it's accurate, or that it goes into great detail about something that most published experts think is really minor (even if it fascinates you personally), then the next person can (and should) legitimately remove it.
For removing material, you need consensus that either that the material just isn't wanted ("good judgement of the editors") or that it violates one or more of Wikipedia's policies. Usually, deletions are because the material is probably inaccurate, was not properly added (no sources or low-quality sources [and you honestly think it might be wrong], or it overemphasizes some minor issue), or that it violates the strict rules for information about living people, or something like that.
Remember that the first goal of consensus is not to reach the point of "We all agree to do X"; it's "We all agree that X {does|does not} comply with Wikipedia's policies." Nearly all disputes are settled with reference to policy, not just "We agree that we all like it" or "None of us like it." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Transparency

Would it be acceptable to change this:

  • To ensure transparency, consensus cannot be formed except on Wikipedia discussion pages. "Off-wiki" discussions, such as those taking place on other websites, on web forums or on IRC, are not taken into account when determining consensus.

to this:

  • To ensure transparency, consensus cannot be formed except on Wikipedia discussion pages. "Off-wiki" discussions, such as those taking place on other websites, on web forums or on IRC, are discouraged, and not taken into account when determining consensus.

Just a thought. Unschool 04:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I've wondered occasionally what prompted this odd statement to begin with. In practice, if you don't have an on-Wiki consensus (which is different from an on-Wiki discussion), then you don't actually have consensus. "Me and my three buddies hashed this out in e-mail" is trivially overturned by any editor with access to the undo button (that is, any editor). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
So I take it you would find my proposed edit to be an improvement? Unschool 06:52, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Technically, you can't discourage it from happening. People talk on IRC all the time, or mail, or IM, or whatever. Three people can decide on something online, and that's fine and consensus, but it's an invalid consensus the moment it's challenged on-wiki and needs to be asserted here. If you can clean up the language to match that, it would be better. rootology (C)(T) 07:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Pointfulness

I've just been reminded of a point that this page fails to make: The goal is not to have the editors happy about the content or style of an article. The goal is to reach a consensus that Wikipedia's policies have been correctly applied in the article. Violating Wikipedia's policies "because we all agreed, so we have a consensus" is not acceptable. I'm not sure how this should be presented (I'm posting this note now because I've thought about it several times over the last few months and failed to get any further than that), but I think it would be an appropriate addition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I've written a possible way of explaining this. I think that the point is important (it expands on the penultimate sentence of the lead, and it might re-direct some editors' energy away from "winning" towards the more boring task of "complying with policies"), but I welcome copy editing and other improvements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
That's not it at all. Policy springs from consensus, it's not the other way around. Violating Wikipedias consesus, "because we all agree" is perfectly all right, as long as one is correct in the "all" part. Ie. it doesn't hold when someone comes along and disagree. It might be good to say something about what we are agreeing to, but compliance with policy is not it. Taemyr (talk) 06:45, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Value of ongoing participation or it's lack thereof

In regards to this edit, I believe the content is factually true and accurate. If I leave a comment on an RFA or AfD, for example, I am never under any obligation or requirement to go back to that page again, and my comments left do not lose value in any way if I don't become an ongoing participant there. rootology (C)(T) 20:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

True: but that's a far cry from never being required to participate in any ongoing discussion, which is what the statement actually said. If you decline to participate in a talk page discussion at an article and just keep editing according to your own ideas, you can get blocked for disruption. Articles get protected every day over just such behavior.
And it's just silly to claim that a single comment made two years ago is going to be given "equal standing and value" by every current editor, or that an unexplained "drive-by" remark will always be attended to with any seriousness. Pages like these are supposed to document reality, not an editor's vision for an ideal world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


If comment on a project page is left unchallenged, then it can be presumed to be valid. If the comment is challenged, and you and others leave it undefended, then the original comment can be presumed to be defeated. If the comment was only on a talk page and is subsequently ignored, it will indeed loose value. Of course, considerable interpretation may be required. Comments may be off-topic, below the dignity of a reply, or otherwise not worth continuing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a problem with this statement because it clashes with "Silence implies consent". So for example an editor might say "I think we should do such and such". But then another person adds a comment that "the xyz policy makes it clear that such and such is not an option, and I think we should rather do this instead". If the first person does not reply, then what should the person reading the exchange assume is the first person's position on the issue?
Wikipedia:Silence and consensus is not nearly as absolute at "Silence implies consent". After a reasonable time, a reader might assume that the first person has yielded the point. The test comes when the second person (or someone else) actually makes a substantial edit, as to whether the edit sticks. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:35, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Also I take issue with rootology. "If I leave a comment on an RFA or AfD, for example, I am never under any obligation or requirement to go back to that page again, and my comments left do not lose value in any way if I don't become an ongoing participant there." because the whole point of these processes is that the polls are meant to be a way to build consent. Leaving a comment early on in a debate and not going back to the page to look at the following arguments which might persuade you to rephrase your opinion negates the point of polls in the consensus driven system that we have developed. Ie one is not obliged to return to a debate, but one has a civic duty to do so if building consensus is to be the dynamic process it is intended to be. -- PBS (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
I've removed the disputed statement, since nobody seems to think that it's actually true in every circumstance. I'd be happy to consider a weaker version that still communicates the general essence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Grammar of "Exceptions" section

Currently the first point under exceptions reads: "Declarations from Jimbo Wales except when overruled by the Arbitration Committee, the Board, or the Developers, particularly for server load or legal issues (copyright, privacy rights, and libel) have policy status (see Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Sources of Wikipedia policy)." This makes no sense. If there were a comma after the word "libel" and its parenthesis that would suggest that the Board or Developers might overrule Jimbo for server load or legal issues, which would be fine (although there would be clearer ways to put it, using dashes). But I'm wondering if the intent is the opposite, that the "Declarations" themselves would be for server load or legal issues? Ideally, assuming the meaning can be clarified, two sentences would be better: "Declarations from JW have policy status. In rare circumstances, for X reasons, those declarations might be overruled by blah, blah, and blah." Yes? Chick Bowen 23:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm reading the current phrase as "JW + others may impose policies on topics X, Y, Z". As you said, it's ambiguous enough that it merits further clarification. --Gutza T T+ 23:47, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Me again. Copied the stuff from the other page, where the wording was much clearer. --Gutza T T+ 00:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
Much better--thanks. In the States we would still put a comma after "server load," though I guess the Brits wouldn't, and it's not a big deal. Chick Bowen 03:10, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

You got a problem with that?

Part of the text removed by an editor's recent indiscriminate reversion was the following first sentence to the Purpose of consensus section: "Consensus is used on Wikipedia to determine the proper content of articles, to resolve editing disputes, and to establish community norms and policies." Is there something wrong with this sentence? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

well, on the silence implies consent rubric, I'll edit this line back in if we don't hear from OM fairly soon, and then we can move on to the next line. --Ludwigs2 22:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Again, NPOV supported by RS, MEDRS, and VERIFY is to determine the proper content of articles, to resolve editing disputes...blah blah blah. Consensus is not. Don't try to reinvent Wikipedia.OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 03:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
So, what IS the purpose of consensus in your view? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 04:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Waste time. That's it. If a valid citation supports a statement, that ends the conversation. PERIOD. If there is nothing to support it, then it's gone. Wikipedia articles should be NPOV supported by everything that makes NPOV. Consensus falls way down the list, maybe just above ENGVAR or some obscure guideline like that. But since some of you like it, keep it here. It doesn't trump NPOV, despite the edits are attempting to change. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 07:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Pr. WP:Policies. "Policies and guidelines express standards that have community consensus. Both need to be approached with common sense." So, policy springs from consensus, and can be set aside by consensus, the idea that policy overrides consensus is not in keeping with our currect policies. Taemyr (talk) 07:59, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
While the discussion of whether consensus trumps policy or vice versa is very interesting, it is not the subject of this section. My thought is that if we have a section in the article called "Purpose of consensus," then we ought to have a sentence at the beginning that starts with "The purpose of consensus is ...." or similar language. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 13:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Agreed; a section named "purpose of consensus" should accurately describe its general role. The current section describes one use of consensus and doesn't even describe that one use correctly. Incidentally, the question of policy vs. consensus is always one of consensus vs. consensus; does the policy truly express a consensus position? Does the consensus for its enforcement in general not hold for a particular case?--Father Goose (talk) 18:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that someone seems to insist that the purpose of consensus is to follow policy. Rather than "The purpose of consensus is to resolve disputes". Or "the purpose of consensus is to find better solutions for writing an encyclopedia". That is where the "consensus vs policy" point gets into this. Taemyr (talk) 10:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

A suggested first sentence

Say, I just noticed this text at the top of this talk page: "Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal." -- Jimmy Wales
How about we make that the first sentence of the "Purpose of consensus" section? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 13:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Mmmmh. That expresses the ideal, one I unfortunately rarely see on Wikipedia.--Father Goose (talk) 18:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
yeah, but it's probably best to do what we can to reinforce it. that's kind of the way it is in the world: the things that we all know we ought to do are usually the things we need the most constant reminding about. --Ludwigs2 21:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that sentence has anything to do with the purpose of consensus. It's like saying, "We send children to school, where they make friends and eat lunch." The purpose of universal education has very little to do with the outward form of the process, like sitting at a desk. The purpose there is to create an informed citizenry and an economically powerful workforce.
Similarly, the ultimate goal of consensus (directly in articles and indirectly on all other pages) is to write a good, complete, WP:Verifiable and WP:Neutral encyclopedia -- a process that is done not by a couple of POV pushers deciding that they agree to say George W. Bush is the spawn of Satan, but by holding up an article against the ideals embodied in our policies and seeing how well the article matches up with them.
I don't oppose inclusion of that sentence in this page; it just doesn't have anything to do with the purpose. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

A suggested alternative to the entire section

combining some of the things being said here, how about a version that looks like this:

According to Jimbo Wales, "Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal." Consensus determines the proper content of articles, resolves editing disputes, and establishes community norms. Policies and guidelines have force (and are enforced) because the ideals they represent are deeply rooted in community consensus. Every discussion on wikipedia should aim to achieve a result which is consistent with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, supported by the immediate participants, and acceptable to the community at large, because that reflects a proper consensus. Individual editors should not use the term as a rationale for reverting or promoting edits, except where Wikipedia's consensus-building procedures (such as Request for Comment or Third Opinion) demonstrate that such a consensus exists.


Consensus requires open discussion between editors, and implies both disagreement and cooperation. Occasionally this means that guidelines such as Ignore all rules and Use common sense should be applied on articles where a limited group of editors have reached an agreement which fails to satisfy policy, guidelines, or the interests of the greater community. Consensus will never be perfect, but it is Wikipedia's assumption that reasonable editors will recognize when an article is neutral, balanced, and reliably sourced, and satisfies other policies and guidelines, regardless of whether they personally like the outcome.

I'll add that I can't really accept OM's suggestion that the only purpose of consensus (one of the core principles of Wikimedia) is to 'Waste time'. But I suspect he didn't mean it in quite the way it came across, so no need to belabor the issue. --Ludwigs2 22:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a guddle, conflating article consensus with community consensus. The present formulation is much clearer. . dave souza, talk 22:46, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure what a guddle is - typo? at any rate, the intent was to distinguish properly between article consensus and community consensus. do you have a better suggestion? --Ludwigs2 01:43, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I fail to understand why dictionary definition of consensus is not enough, and you have to resort to ad Jumbonem. It is dangerous when a community starts inventing the slang; it is a slippery slope which quickly leads separation of the "initiated" from the rest of the world. Unless it is positively necessary, common English words must not be redefined. The policy must focus to describe how' the consensus is achieved and what criteria and in which circumstances are to be used to recognize that "the C" is achieved or near at hand. - 7-bubёn >t 02:41, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

  • And in order not to invent bicycle, I would suggest all parties to refresh the knowledge of the wikipedia articles "consensus" and "Consensus decision-making", with a by-product of improving the two. Once the "consensus about consensus" is reached we may start figuring out the "consensus-cubed", i.e., trying to reach the consensus on the consensus about the consensus-reaching. If we don't know that we speak in the same terms, we cannot formulate a policy. - 7-bubёn >t 02:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Surprize pipe

I accidentally stumbled upon this: [[WP:BITE|New users]] in the policy. IMHO it is bad style: pipes must be transparent. If one wants to refer to WP:BITE, please do so explicitly. - 7-bubёn >t 02:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC).

I agree that the link is bad style, and that there is no need or real purpose for the link to be there. I removed it. [1] --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Revert

Without a mass of cutting and pasting, I decided to revert a whole bunch of inappropriate edits from Ludwigs2 and others. Ludwigs thinks consensus overrides core policy, and what he wrote, read as such. NPOV and its foundation of WEIGHT, RS, and VERIFY are the most important thing. Ludwigs should not make changes to core policy without getting others to join in. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 05:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

hmmm.. reverting multiple edits by multiple editors, for no particularly good reason, and without meaningful discussion. fascinating. --Ludwigs2 06:42, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Discussed. Please refactor your personal attacks. Of course, how many times have you been blocked for personal attacks? 5? 6? OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 07:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
as I said on your talk page, please discuss the edits, not the editor - as you'll notice I did above. civility is not difficult, OM. --Ludwigs2 07:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I haven't been blocked. You have at least 5 times for incivility. Don't pretend to lecture me on that particular topic, despite your expertise in getting blocked frequently. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 03:43, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

These recent edits brought to my attention how utterly wrong the current "purpose of consensus" section is: "The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines." That's wrong from top to bottom: the role of consensus on Wikipedia is dispute resolution, first and foremost, not "rule enforcement". Rule enforcement may be the ultimate result of consensus, but rule rejection can also be the result. If there's a true consensus to ignore a rule in a given case, the rule gets ignored.--Father Goose (talk) 22:25, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

FG: did you look at the version Butwhatdoiknow and I had worked out, here, prior to OM's spate of reverts? I think it's a significant improvement over the current version... --Ludwigs2 22:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Hiding out in the backwoods of Wikipedia, attempting to change core policy is really not very acceptable. Consensus does not trump NPOV. Etc. Etc. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 03:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
The version Butwhat had worked on was better than the current version but failed to point out that policy does have what we might call a standing consensus -- although it did at least that that consensus can change, as necessary. I accept Orangemarlin's assertion that Wikipedia's core principles cannot tossed aside casually -- though they can, under very special circumstances, be ignored purposefully, when there is a true and broad consensus to do so.
So the section has to be refocused on the actual "purpose of consensus" (dispute resolution -- not rule enforcement per se) and it also has to stop suggesting that rule enforcement is the primary role of consensus. Quite the contrary -- consensus is the primary means of rule enforcement.--Father Goose (talk) 06:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't edit too many articles where NPOV would be ignored. Can you name an instance where we would toss aside NPOV in a medical article? I can't think of one. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 22:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
The concept of NPOV was arrived at by consensus on one of our predecessor wikis, and is in fact designed with consensus in mind: As the number of people increases, the consensus between people discussing an article will tend to naturally trend towards NPOV.
That said, this process could sometimes take a very long time (years); hence we have more best practices than just pure consensus, so we can speed things up a bit. Incidentally; personally, I think eventualism is quite practical. After all, things are always tending in the right direction, and we can speed things up as we get around to them. This means we can take a lazy approach to wikipedia maintenance, and lazy approaches are always practical ;-) . But my opinion on eventualism is just my personal opinion.
To answer your question more directly, here's an example from a year ago: five ways to ignore npov. I wonder if all five would still be considered valid today? I don't think the list was exhaustive, perhaps there are other common-sense reasons to (temporarily) ignore NPOV too? <scratches head> --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Purpose of consensus - First sentence, Part II

The current opening sentence of the Purpose section is

Consensus is the main tool for enforcing Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

I propose to restate it is as:

Editors use the consensus process to reach agreement regarding how best to implement Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in any given situation.

I believe this leaves the original meaning intact while providing a bit more information regarding how editors should use the "tool" of consensus. Does anyone disagree? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 00:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It's an improvement, though the second sentence ("The focus of every dispute...") is the one that really needs fixing.--Father Goose (talk) 04:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I've got my eye on that one but, I suspect, that the best way forward is one step at a time. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 13:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it's an improvement. I think "Consensus is [a] tool for enforcing" is not true. Overall, I don't think the rambling section "Purpose of consensus" should even be there. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I have no objection to the proposed change. I can't say that I think three sentences qualifies as "rambling", though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I think I know what it is saying, why it is saying it, and who the intended audience is, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure if it reflects ideals, or it is there to be a rule. --SmokeyJoe (talk)
I don't like either sentence. This will allow fringe POV pushing editors a tool to cause all kinds of grief. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 17:37, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Not an independent rationale?

The "Consensus can change" section starts with this paragraph:

Consensus is not immutable. Past decisions are open to challenge and are not binding, and one must realize that such changes are often reasonable.

I would like to add the following sentence:

Accordingly, "violates consensus" is not an independent rationale for reverting an edit unless the original text was the result of a recent discussion on the article's talk page.

Any objections to this change? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 22:02, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd agree, were it not that "Violates consensus" is never an independent rationale for anything, ever ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC) I usually think something like: "Yes I *know* it violates consensus now. After all, you just reverted me. Can you tell me something I didn't know?" ;-) People could use the extra 18 characters to say something useful in their edit summary. Usually I feel too diplomatic to come right out and say it though ;-)
pssst... can you bottle some of that diplomacy? I could use a swig or two myself at times, and I would happily throw the rest of it at various editors - kind of a wp:CIV molotov cocktail.  :-D --Ludwigs2 22:54, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
A Civil cocktail? Hmmm, creative. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:08, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

And nice to see some productive wiki-editing on that section! :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:42, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Ignore policy often?

Recent changes to this page inserted the following paragraph:

"It is often sufficient to simply treat the policy pages as a guide, and to simply act within the spirit of wikipedia (Ignore all rules). At times you may discover (or diplomatically seek) disagreement with people, at which point you might wish to negotiate a new consensus: Bold, revert, discuss."

This goes too far; way too far. This page should not state that policy should "often" be ignored. Also, the bold/revert/discuss cycle is already covered in WP:Consensus #Consensus building in talk pages and should be further elaborated there, not in WP:Consensus #Purpose. I attempted a change along these lines. Eubulides (talk) 05:28, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. People should not "often" ignore policies. Furthermore, most people reading this page are unlikely to know what the "spirit of Wikipedia" really is, and this will probably set many of them off in the wrong direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
*Find a vandal: 0.01 seconds
*Fixing his edits: 5 seconds.
*Ban him from wikipedia: 1 second.
*Getting him told off by his boss: Priceless
There are some things policy can't do, for everything else, there's masterc... Wikipedia:bots. ;-)
--Kim Bruning (talk) 17:05, 21 March 2009 (UTC) To elucidate: If all we needed to do was follow policy, well, there's bots for that, they can apply most policy more even handedly and more accurately than any human can. We need humans for things that require careful consideration, creativity and compassion.
I don't think that your assertion here is even close to true. A bot can't tell the difference between a reliable and an unreliable source on the web. A bot can't tell the difference between someone correcting a legitimate factual error and someone randomly changing a date in an article because he wants to see whether anyone will notice. A bot can't read a dozen largely contradictory sources and figure out what statements should be made about a controversial subject. This policy is never invoked for blatant vandalism, like adding "NICK CHEREKOS HAS ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA(ALL) AND HE DOMINATES IT!! :) HI MOM!!" to the end of Leukemia[2] -- a piece of blatant vandalism, by the way, that none of the anti-vandalism bots caught. The bots cannot deal with these policy problems, even though "all we needed to do was follow policy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
as an aside, I'll leave a note on some vandalbot pages: 'dominates' and 'hi mom' should have been caught - it's such typical high school vandalcruft.
I agree with your aside. You can catch that kind of thing by altering the ruleset used by a bot. Things like date changes can be flagged by bots too, though they might need a touch of human intelligence to doublecheck. Some known unreliable sources are already being excluded by a plugin. There are algorithms to calculate reliability of certain sources. All these things are being worked on. None of your examples require (much) human intervention; and therefore probably shouldn't use humans.
The reason we use humans at all, is due to the ability of humans to think for themselves and show compassion and common sense. If you don't believe me, feel free to ask User:Jwales, he'll tell you the same story. In fact, he might tell you that he's opposed to using bots for much at all, since he believes that human flexibility is superior to anything a bot can do. Of course, his ideas don't work so well in situations where human flexibility has been impeded.
Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to waste volunteer time on robot-tasks. Let the humans do what humans are good at. After all, volunteers (real people!) have chosen to donate their time, and we must respect that donation and apply it as efficiently as possible. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:58, 23 March 2009 (UTC) strictly speaking, the original example I gave is done by a bot-assisted human, see WP:AWB, WP:HUGGLE, and Wikipedia:VandalFighter.

Off-wiki consensus

This recently-added paragraph has a couple of problems:

"To bring an off-wiki agreement back into the fold of on-wiki consensus, it generally suffices to post the position that you reached onto wiki, being careful to explain the reasoning behind it. Subsequent discussion and actions will then be on-wiki. Beware:The concepts of silence-implies-consent and mutability of consensus work differently in this scenario; if you do not take due care, you may find yourself brutally blindsided."

First, it makes it too easy for someone to claim that a consensus was achieved off-wiki. Off-wiki discussions are never relevant to on-wiki consensus, and one can't create an on-wiki consensus simply by copying an off-wiki consensus onto the wiki. Second, I have no idea what that second sentence means; I read it several times and I still don't get the point. For now, I removed the paragraph. Eubulides (talk) 05:40, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that any agreements reached off-wiki are utterly irrelevant. "My buddies and I decided last week in a private chat room what we were going do this with the page, so that's the consensus, even if you don't like it..." is simply unacceptable. It's also not what the consensus-über-alles editors that wrote it would describe as a consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking in terms of process.

By logic
  • You can start a discussion off-wiki, but an off-wiki discussion doesn't influence the wiki (trivially true).
  • An on-wiki discussion does influence on-wiki consensus (a true fact).
  • If you copy an off-wiki discussion onto the wiki, you now have an on-wiki discussion (trivially true)
  • Therefore, if you copy an off-wiki discussion onto the wiki, it becomes part of the on-wiki discussion, and can influence consensus.
By experience
  • Many mediation discussions (used to) start off-wiki with the mediator conducting shuttle-diplomacy between the parties, until the parties trusted each other enough to cooperate again.
  • the agreements were then published on wiki.
  • Other people could then continue discussing the agreements that were made, and adjust them further (WP:CCC in action)

Therefore, historically, it HAS been possible to start out off-wiki, as long as you brought the discussion back on-wiki at some point.

Do and don't:

  • You can NOT say "Ok, we reached consensus off-wiki, now live with it!"
  • You CAN say "John Doe and I had a drink at the local bar the other day, and we believe that proposal so and so has a good chance at succeeding ... do other people agree?"
  • You CAN reach agreement on an edit with John Doe, and then just make the edit, as per WP:BOLD, this edit can then be edited further, contested , etc, as per normal wikipedia editing or dispute resolution. At that point, it is part of the normal consensus process.
  • all of the above can be contested or continued using WP:CCC
By policy

Afaik in theory it has never been repealed that discussions on the wikipedia-en-l mailing list count towards wiki-consensus. In practice I don't believe it has a strong influence anymore.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 16:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that off-wiki consensus is not some kind of binding thing, but that's only because consensus in general is not that way (CCC). How necessary is it to mention this? Are there current cases of people trying to "enforce a consensus" formed off-wiki? (And, big deal: I see people constantly trying to enforce on-wiki consensus... that was not necessarily consensus to begin with, and has changed even if it was consensus at one point.)--Father Goose (talk) 07:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Off-wiki is more problematic, although less common, because it prevents those that object to respond to the reasons for a decision. Taemyr (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Actually WP:CCC says that you may respond at any point in time, even years later. I think that takes most of the sting out of things. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:44, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure that we need to mention off-wiki discussions at all, other than (perhaps) to say that off-wiki agreements are not binding on the community. If it's a good decision, then a bold update will probably work. If there are good reasons, then they can be summarized on the article's talk page with a proposal. I don't really see why this needs to be treated any differently from an individual editor spending a few days working on a revision by him-/herself before sharing it with the rest of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Yeah.--Father Goose (talk) 00:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Precisely :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

"Purpose of Consensus"

I removed

"Consensus" among a small number of editors can never override the community consensus that is presented in Wikipedia's policies and guidelines; instead, consensus is the main tool for enforcing these standards. The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines. Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome.

Policies and guidelines spring from consensus. It's not the other way around. Usually polices and guidelines lag behind consensus, see [[Wikipedia::Policies and guidelines#Sources_of_Wikipedia_policy]]. In addition both policy and guidelines can be ignored, see WP:IAR. Taemyr (talk) 02:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood. This page is primarily about consensus at it operates for mainspace edits. WP:POLICY is the page concerned with the creation and changes of policies and guidelines.
And as for 'consensus' trumping policies: It does not matter if 100% of the editors on a page agree to add unsourced derogatory information to an individual's biography. This is not allowed because it does not line up with the relevant policy, even though the editors have "consensus". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Not so. Policy springs from established practice. So Consensus on how we develop mainspace is precisely what drives development of policy. And this page governs consensus in general.
The laws of California trumps consensus. Decrees from the foundation trumps consensus. That is why adding unsourced derogatory information is never going to be allowed no matter how strong a consensus there appears to be. Consensus still trumps wikipedia policy, so if there is consensus that WP:NOT should be set aside for a particular article then WP:NOT will be set aside for that article. Taemyr (talk) 04:25, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I re-added this section pending more discussion from more people. A small group, at no time, can summarily override established consensus/policy on a case-by-case basis because they want to. The wording may not be perfect, but the idea is basically "true". No minority can self-appoint their decision over a wider group on Wikipedia. rootology (C)(T) 22:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I think what a few others have attempted to say, is that if a hand full of editors create/edit a page so that it goes against policies/guidelines(p/g), they can expect that sooner or later someone will come along and change the page to follow p/g or put it up for deletion. If they want to keep the page in the form they prefer, they will need to get consensus to change the policies/guidelines. I think we have seen it is possible for small groups to change less prominent guidelines to their liking, at least temporarily. Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable. It's harder to do this with policy, as more folks follow policy and insist on exposing proposed changes to a wider audience... --Versageek 23:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I largely agree with the sentiments you describe. But, consensus is not only a handful of editors. Or rather a handful of editors is consensus only until someone disagree.
I disagree that it is needed to gain consensus for a policy change in order to let an exception stand. All that is needed is consensus that the exception is preferable to following policy in that particular case. WP:Policy calls for both guidelines and policy to be approached with common sense.
Also note that the section as written defines consensus as a mean to the end of making sure articles follow policy. Not to the end of making an encyclopedia as good as possible. And that is a sentiment that I do not believe that has consensus. Taemyr (talk) 00:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
The passage is fundamentally important. A group of people who don't want to follow, say WP:OR in an AfD discussion may come to a consensus that original research is okay for this article. This does not mean Wikipedia is suddenly allowing OR, such a majority would be given little weight compared to those who sided with the existing larger consensus that is policy. This is important otherwise the standards we use will be at the whim of special interest groups.
We do have WP:IAR for when we really need to break the rules. Of course using IAR is a bit like jumping into the water to see if you can swim or not. Chillum 00:27, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
But a group of people are not consensus. How much weight that should be given to a majority arguing for ignoring WP:OR depends on their specific reasons for setting WP:OR aside. The arguments from a minority that states that WP:OR can not be easily set aside because policy is a compelling argument.
We do have IAR, but how do we determine if an IAR application is good? We seek consensus; usually when IAR is well applied it is consensus by default, because no one disagrees with the action. The section under discussion however explicitly forbids this because it statess that consensus only exists if it follows policy. Taemyr (talk) 00:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Regarding your first point, the minority is correct that OR can not be easily set aside because the policy constitutes a much larger consensus. That argument is correct and should be enforced by a well trained admin.
Regarding IAR, you know you used it right when it works. It is really never useful to bypass consensus or even slight opposition. IAR is pretty much only useful when breaking the rule is the correct thing to do and nobody is disagreeing.
In the end it is up to administrators to enforce policy, and if there is a good reason to not enforce policy then they are the ones to be convinced. Of course what they enforce can be changed. Anyone can go an recommend changes to policy, I have done so many times in the past with great success. Policy can change, but it should not be disregarded without very good reason. Chillum 00:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a common misunderstanding. Administrators have no obligation to enforce policy, because that's not the purpose of the admin flag. Instead, the community (that means you and me) enforce consensus together, by encouraging people to understand it and work with it. Pages in the wikipedia: namespace are written to explain the current state of consensus on all kinds of different topics which people have found interesting to build a consensus on. Naturally, the caveats that apply to wiki-pages everywhere also apply to such policy/guideline/essay pages, so you need to apply common-sense when reading them. --Kim Bruning (talk) 09:51, 16 March 2009 (UTC) The purpose of the admin flag is merely to give a trusted person access to a number of additional tools. Adminship has been considerably nerfed, so the actual added value of the flag is not so great, these days.)

options

Is there a better way of expressing this idea than the current text? I oppose its deletion (largely because of the number of inexperienced editors that seek to elevate anti-policy agreements above community standards), but I'm open to improvements that clarify the point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:50, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
My preferred wording of this goes along the line of "Policy is a very important argument". Taemyr (talk) 23:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
A portion of it could be along the lines of: "Wikipedia policy is the result of a very significant and carefully developed consensus involving a very large cross section of the community. As such a small consensus in a localized area cannot override the larger consensus that is policy. To change policy one needs to reach a consensus to change policy.". If not those words then the points presented in it should be integrated imo. Chillum 01:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
That is unclear. It can mean;
  • The existence of exception does not automatically alter policy. Which is true.
  • No execption to policy is allowed. Which is not true.
Taemyr (talk) 02:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
The problem with Taemyr's statement (while more or less true) is that consensus is itself a policy. So you could read that circularly: "We agree with each other to say that 'Homeopathy is scientifically proven to be effective for all diseases'. Consensus is a policy. Therefore, since we agree, we have necessarily complied with (a) policy, and we can do this." The point that we want to make is that it's not sufficient for the editors on any given article to "agree" to violate policies like WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:BLP in the name of consensus. It might be more accurate to say that "Content policies and guidelines (like WP:Verifiability) are very important arguments."
Chillum's proposal is a fine statement of the background principles, and applies to changes to policy pages, but it isn't so clearly applicable to the most important case (mutually agreeing POV pushing wikilawyers working in the main namespace) as to be sufficient. I think that we need to explicitly state that the goal is for the editors to agree that the resulting article manifests Wikipedia's policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:29, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that one can read it as a circular argument because "The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines." automatically implies that consensus includes all relevant policies and guidelines not just CONSENSUS (which only covers how to reach a consensus). It seems to me that the suggested alterations are an attempt to clarify something that only adds confusion through instruction creep without adding anything meaningful. For example WhatamIdoing mentions "It might be more accurate to say that "Content policies and guidelines (like WP:Verifiability) are very important arguments" So does that mean that the Naming conventions policy is not a very important argument? I know WhatamIdoing does not mean that, but if we go adding specifics to this section we are likely to have to add lots of text to cover lots of different issues an IMHO that is not needed. --PBS (talk) 11:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you are missing who is arguing for what here. The wording "The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines." is similar to WhatamIdoings addition of WP:Consensus#Purpose of consensus. I oppose this on the grounds that consensus determine policy, it's not the other way around. And policy is not intented to be foolproof, exceptions can occur. I propsed "Policy is a very important argument" as an alternative, which WhatamIdoing opposes on the grounds that it can give rise to circular arguments. Taemyr (talk) 03:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Taemyr, I'm not sure how to make you understand my issue. Imagine four editors at Homeopathy foo. All four editors are strongly in favor of Foo. All four editors agree to remove all sourced scientific criticism from the article, leaving a paean to the wonders of the panacea Foo.
You go to the article. You say, "No, this doesn't comply with Wikipedia's policies. We must be neutral. We must report what our reliable sources say. Our reliable sources say that Foo is worthless."
The four editors say: "No! In deleting this information, we have complied with a policy. We complied with the policy WP:Consensus, which says that the only thing that matters is that we agree. It doesn't mention a single word about the (long-standing, widely supported) standard of complying with any other policy."
I want a statement in this policy that say: "POV-pushing editors may not invoke "consensus" to dramatically violate content policies so long as they comply with this single process policy." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
It already does that to the extent that is preferable. Consensus is not a vote count. WP:Consensus states;
"In determining consensus, consider the strength and quality of the arguments, including the evolution of final positions, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace if available. Minority opinions typically reflect genuine concerns, and their (strict) logic may outweigh the "logic" (point of view) of the majority. New users who are not yet familiar with consensus should realize that polls (if held) are often more likely to be the start of a discussion rather than the end of one. Editors decide outcomes during discussion."
In the case you mention, the four people who insist on removing the criticism is offering no argument beyond "we feel like it". The opposing argument is that (a) WP policy calls for adherence to NPOV, meaning that relevant sources gets mentioned, (b) These criticism is reliable. He also makes the implied argument that (c) these critisims is relevant pr WP:UNDUE, and (d) he prefers that the criticism is included. So there is at best no consensus present, and most editors will feel that the strength of an argument from policy is such that the mere preferences of the 4 editors gets outweighed to the point that there is a consensus for inclusion. The important point is that if sound arguments for why NPOV should be set aside is provided we have to look evaluate the discussion on the basis of those arguments. Not on a boilerplate "policy overides consensus".
WP:Consensus also states that "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale."
Which means that the apparent consensus amongst the four editors must be reevaluated when an additional editor voices his opinion. That is "we discussed this earlier" means only that there was a consensus at that earlier juncture.
Taemyr (talk) 05:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Taemyr, my goal is not to write this for the purpose of those people, like yourselves, that already understand what Wikipedia really means when it talks about consensus. My goal is to write this so that even the most inexperienced or biased person cannot misunderstand the relationship of this policy to the content policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
But that is not what you are doing. What you are doing is putting into writing the idea that the purpose of building an encyclopedia takes second seat to following policy. Taemyr (talk) 20:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
No, I'm not, and I'm not sure how you could interpret that statement in that fashion. What I'm saying is that article-specific consensus on content takes a backseat to the content policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
You are saying that the purpose of 'consensus', which is the decision making procedure of wikipedia, is to follow policy. That means that no argument to the effect that a specific policy application is contrary to the overall purpose of making a wikipedia can possible be made. For that matter I would interpret "article-specific consensus on content takes a backseat to the content policies." in the same way. Any wording to the effect that policy can put consenus aside means that the policy becomes more important than wikipedia's purpose. Taemyr (talk) 08:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
No, because we have a policy that explicitly deals with that situation: WP:IAR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:23, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
You mean YES because we have a policy that explicitly deals with that situation. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Actually, Kim, I mean NO: I do not claim "that no argument to the effect that a specific policy application is contrary to the overall purpose of making a wikipedia can possibl[y] be made", because IAR is exactly such an argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm always amazed at how liberally the term 'consensus' is abused on wikipedia. for instance, if I were to turn WhatamIdoing's example around (assume four anti-fringe editors agreeing to remove well-sourced material that supports fringe-panacea Foo, and suggest that they should be prevented from doing so) you'd have a horde of people here screaming about how that violates NPOV and consensus. what's good for the gander is not (apparently) good for the goose. In my view, the term 'consensus' should always be used as though it meant 'consensus of the community at large', and whenever it comes down to a specific NPOV debate on a specific page it should be resolved in terms of what 'the community at large' would consider a fair and unbiased presentation. efforts of fringe editors and anti-fringe editors to indoctrinate the public aside, this is what makes sense to most people, yah? --Ludwigs2 01:30, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
No actually it comes down to NPOV only. You keep thinking consensus matters, when NPOV does. In your world fringe editors like yourself would pull together those individuals who don't understand RS and MEDRS, preventing true NPOV from happening. There is no anti-fringe editors, they are NPOV editors. And Wikipedia doesn't indoctrinate, except when POV, Fringe-pushing editors get involved. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 06:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
yes, I keep thinking that consensus matters. pity that you don't. which also explains why there's no point responding to the rest of your post. --Ludwigs2 10:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
Ludwigs2, IMO the removal of truly well-sourced, on-topic, and accurately represented material is a problem, no matter whether it is "pro" or "anti" anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
I agree with you on the level of abstract principle; that would be a really great way to do things. but (as I said above), my experience is that there is an aggressively defended double-standard in the application of this kind of principle, and that's worse than having no principle at all. I mean look, we have editors (whom I'll leave unnamed) who push to allow academic critics of fringe theory topics to be treated as valid sources (regardless of who they are or whether their degree is remotely related to the topic), but then push to exclude academic supporters of fringe topics on the grounds that they're not notable or not credible (even when they are located in a good discipline to talk about the issues). and they get away with that by mucking with the definition of consensus so that it effectively means 'agreement among people who already agree with us'. there's no way it could be justified as 'general agreement of the community at large'. now if people don't want to reach for the broader principles of consensus, that's fine; things will get settled in the good ol' fashioned agonistic way that things have always gotten settled on wikipedia. but trying to institutionalize some half-baked idea designed to privilege one side of the debate isn't really a good idea.

An aside on edit summaries

Oh, and when you delete things that have been discussed -- I see that you found part of the talk page comments above -- then please avoid using edit summaries like "rv undiscussed addition". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I found your talk page comments to late. Sorry about missing it at first, and thus writing an somewhat inappropriate edit summary. Taemyr (talk) 04:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Whoa there

I've been alerted to rapid-fire changes and what looks almost like edit-warring by User Locke Cole, who is currently upset about the long-standing definition(s) of consensus at WP in relation to a debate about date linking.

It is hard to follow exactly what has been unilaterally changed in this policy, but I believe it is especially important that consensus-gathering be shown here, on this talk page, as an example of the policy.

Can someone revert to the long-standing policy, which seems date back to 28 Feb (?) so we can discuss this in the usual manner? Tony (talk) 04:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

FUI at the first glance the diff between Feb 12 (last staple date before the current edit surge) and today is reasonably close to zero change. Feb 28 / Locke Cole comes via this:

  1. (cur) (prev) 04:06, February 28, 2009 Locke Cole (talk | contribs | block) m (12,097 bytes) (→How consensus emerges during the editing process: jpg -> svg) (undo)
  2. (cur) (prev) 04:03, February 28, 2009 Ludwigs2 (talk | contribs | block) (12,094 bytes) (→Purpose of consensus: consensus is clearly not merely a process for resolving disputes. if you're going to make this change, make it right.) (undo)
  3. (cur) (prev) 02:43, February 28, 2009 Father Goose (talk | contribs | block) (11,532 bytes) (→Purpose of consensus: I like the copyedit. Adding mention of IAR, as "following rules" is not the sole purpose of consensus) (undo)
  4. (cur) (prev) 17:34, February 27, 2009 Butwhatdoiknow (talk | contribs | block) (11,436 bytes) (→Purpose of consensus: Explain that consensus is a process, not a rationale. Copy edit.)
  5. (cur) (prev) 02:56, February 12, 2009 Rootology (talk | contribs | block) (11,288 bytes) (Undid revision 270091004 by Taemyrlets discuss on talk; it's a true statement. handful cannot override practice/policy/wide consensus) (undo)

and already accumulates significant edits. - 7-bubёn >t 05:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This policy is changed via consensus. Not bureaucracy. Changes to it may be WP:UNILATERAL, if preferred. ;-) If you disagree with a change, edit or revert, as you see fit. --Kim Bruning (talk) 23:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Are you suggesting reaching consensus in policy pages via edit wars? Last time I checked, unless the edit is for a typo or comma , you have to talk to people first. Policies are not edited chaotically at a whim. - 7-bubёn >t 21:52, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Not edit wars. Proper wiki-process, which is the final decider of all content (see m:Community foundation issues, and yes I just edited that page to *remove* consensus, because that wasn't actually true for all wikimedia wikis, sadly enough :-( ). As to what that process is, the definition depends on the wiki you're on.
On en.wikipedia, we use Wikipedia:Consensus. You may have heard of it. ;-) This includes concepts such as WP:BRD, and WP:SILENCE. And before you say that that couldn't possibly work? That's what everyone else said at the start of this decade too, for all of Wikipedia even. I think we proved them wrong. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, I have a multiple experience of being whacked with "revert" button with the sole summary "change not discussed". Also the very top of this talk page explicitly says "Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus." - this is probably the reason of knee-jerk reverts I experienced. On the personal note, please try to speak plainly, without irony and smileys. It is good with close friends, but a multicultural/multilingual environment you may be easily misunderstood, with subsequent unnecessary drama. - 7-bubёn >t 16:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
Who hasn't been whacked like that from time to time? It's a terribly rude and unwiki thing to do, isn't it? --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Purpose of consensus - Eliminate second sentence?

The Purpose section currently reads:

Editors use the consensus process to reach agreement regarding how best to implement Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in any given situation. The focus of every dispute should be determining how best to comply with the relevant policies and guidelines. Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome.

The second sentence seems redundant at best and a bit confusing at worst. So I propose to eliminate it, making the section read:

Editors use the consensus process to reach agreement regarding how best to implement Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in any given situation. Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome.

Any reason why this change should not be made? Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 18:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's good by me. The section still has nothing to do with the "purpose of consensus" as a whole... perhaps a rename to something like "Consensus and policy" is in order?--Father Goose (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
yeah, that works for me as well. --Ludwigs2 21:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Eliminate entire section?

This is backwards. Wikipedia policy is defined by consensus, not the other way around. If you write that consensus implements policy, or acts within policy, or other things in that vein; you end up with a circular argument.

Since the entire section is illogical, I'll remove it for now. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:52, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

And another thing: Yes, you only reach consensus when everyone agrees to bide by the outcome. If you do not like the outcome, you should try to negotiating a better compromise, else you're disenfranchising yourself.
If you do not like the outcome, and you still do it, well, that's pure evil. Under no circumstance should you act against your conscience, as that's when things start going seriously downhill. There's a very famous conference where people hadn't learned that lesson yet... --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
The conference I was thinking of was the Wannsee_Conference, but either the article has drifted, my recollection has drifted, or I got the information from an alternate source. Drat.
I especially disliked this part, the heart of all evil bureaucracies worldwide: "Editors have reached consensus when they agree that they have appropriately applied Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not when they personally like the outcome."
Acting in a way you're not happy with (acting against your conscience) is never a good idea. I know I sometimes call people "wicked" or "evil" in a fun kind of way; but telling people to actually go against themselves and do what they think is wrong, well, that's the Real Thing, and we should be very careful about that kind of thinking.
Shall we agree to Not Be Evil? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC) the most funny part? "appropriately" was linked to Wikipedia:Use common sense, a restatement of Ignore All Rules ;-)
Kim, you're once again missing the point. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a whole lot of things that some editors think is "wrong". We need a section here that says, in effect, that consensus does not trump all of the other policies -- that, for example, a couple of neo-nazis can't "agree" to re-write their favorite articles to reflect their POV simply on the grounds that the current group of editors have a "consensus" to ignore every other single policy and the entire community's clearly stated standards. Back here in the real world, some articles are only being worked on by a small group of very biased editors. Tens of thousands of articles have no editor watching them. "Well, when a reasonable editor shows up, then the consensus changed from pro-Nazi to something else" is simply wrong: There was never any valid consensus to turn Wikipedia into a platform for biased garbage, even when no editor is actively opposing the garbage at this particular minute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:29, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Agree with Kim that the section is a bureaucratese bloat. It is unclear. It serves no purpose, even if it does no harm (beyond bloating this important policy). I cannot see how the section would achieve what WhatamIdoing seems to think it would achieve. I certainly hope he doesn’t mean to quote it to make a point somewhere. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:22, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Of course you are right, this "theory behind the practice" only applies where the broader community is adequately present. But that's trivially true: after all, if an article is un- or under- watched, then no-one is present "on the ground" to do anything about it.
We could write that all unwatched pages should be covered in invisible pink unicorns and rainbows, and the effect would be exactly the same. (To wit: no effect).
As it stands, when a page finally does become watched over time, it will start to conform to community consensus. Which is the effect we wanted. (Not QED, because this isn't a formal proof).
We could certainly start making up a large corpus of rules to tell people what to do when they finally find such a page, but I think no one really wants that, we already have best practices for such occasions, and my position is that we should conform to that community consensus.
I think the actual problem is more about how to ensure that more pages are watched. That's an interesting challenge. For starters, do you regularly check the unpatrolled new pages list? If not, do so, add problematic new pages to your watchlist, and tell your friends to do the same! --Kim Bruning (talk) 08:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
My watchlist already covers more than a thousand pages, thanks, and in my experience, new pages are not the primary source of problems involving a "local consensus of biased editors" to violate (which I use to indicate something difference from ignoring) core policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm sure that's true! Do you have a concrete best practice or proposal for finding these groups of people? I maintain that we need to find these kinds of situations before we can actually do anything about them. Or, alternately, even if you have no proposal as yet but do have examples of where things are wrong at the moment, that would be a good start too. --Kim Bruning (talk) 21:37, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't think they're hard to find. I think that anyone that has looked at as many articles as I have will inevitably run across them. Controversial topics tend to attract them, of course (speaking of which, MastCell could use another voice or two at Abortion-breast cancer hypothesis this month).
From the policy perspective, what we need is somethiing that says "This policy does not trump all the other ones."
Let me give you a less-fraught example: medical articles tend to attract linkspam in the form of internet chat groups for patients. Are these groups valuable resources for patients? Sure, a lot of them are. Should Wikipedia be listing chat boards under ==External links==? No -- as in, these links are never acceptable for articles about the diseases. But do we get chat board members fussing at us? Yes, of course. And what's their argument? "It complies with one broadly worded sentence in WP:EL." Typically, they want to elevate one sentence in WP:ELMAYBE over multiple sentences in WP:ELNO and WP:MEDMOS -- not because they think this best promotes Wikipedia's goals, but because they think it best promotes their personal interests.
People who are trying to push a particular outcome are not trying to understand the totality of Wikipedia's goals. They're trying to get the outcome that they personally like best. So we need to arm our regular editors with tools that provide clarity about the big picture. In this policy, what we need is something that says "No, you can't ignore our content policies. Just having agreement with a couple of like-minded editors is not good enough." This approach lets our regular editors simply point at something pre-existing, instead of spending hours explaining Wikipedia's purpose and goals from scratch to a person that truly doesn't care about the encyclopedia and is only engaged in the conversation in an effort to get his/her own way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
But the point is that until a disagreeing editor comes along the agreement among those editors is good enough. Consensus will always be determined among those editors participating in the discussion. The tool that a disagreeing editor have is that whenever new arguments is voiced then consensus must be reevaluated, and that policy is a very important argument. So the important point is not that policy overrules consensus, it is that an agreement amongst likeminded editors is only consensus if their arguments are strong enough to override any opposing arguments. Taemyr (talk) 21:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
No. What you describe is essentially "you can do whatever you want until someone tells you to stop." Individual editors cannot validly agree to use Wikipedia as a platform for slander. Individual editors cannot validly agree to use Wikipedia to spread hate messages. The (temporary) absence of another editor telling them to stop doing it does not mean that such actions comply with our policies. The fact that people occasionally get murdered in the real world does not mean that murder is acceptable. The fact that people occasionally abuse Wikipedia does not mean that such misuse is acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
“Do what you think is good until someone tells you to stop” IS correct. Your specific points already have clear consensus-mandate policy statements. Slander, hate? See WP:NPA or WP:BLP. When a newcomer arrives and behaves outside the accepted norms, we politely tell them to stop. If they are not a real newcomer, or they don’t stop after the first request, that’s another matter. WhatamIdoing, I feel that to understand your perspective here, I need to look into things happening elsewhere. Is this true? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Nononono, in the case of slander, or hate messages, or copyvios, WhatamIdoing is correct. But that is because we as editors can not decide to set aside the laws of Florida. So in those cases consensus is irrelevant. Taemyr (talk) 16:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
SmokeyJoe, I see how you came to that conclusion: we assume, in good faith and despite evidence to the contrary, that every single user is attempting to improve the encyclopedia until proven wrong in each individual case. It's not possible to have an open wiki without such an assumption. But the fact remains that all editors have already been told to stop doing certain things, by the mere fact that policies (and laws) to the contrary exist. The information is underneath every single edit box. "Nobody told me personally" (to stop slandering people, to stop attacking people, or whatever) is not a viable excuse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
When it comes to slander, or attacking real, living people, I think such editors should be blocked until they appeal for forgiveness, and there is no need to consider such cases in this policy. Sometimes wikipedians attack other wikipedians out of an obviously misplaced but intense belief that the other is stupid, mistaken, and stopping a necessary improvement. In these cases, I don’t think anything here will help, although I am happy to hear you tell me otherwise. I think this page should describe best practice, and that having it cover poor practice will lead to wikilawyering. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
From my experience, policies are more often employed as ammunition rather than as a means to prevent attacks. The only way to get everyone to start assuming good faith is to get them to let go of their clubs policies, and get them talking like normal humans again. Of course, I often only get called in when things are already pretty pathological, so perhaps there are other situations where strict adherence to policies promotes harmony and the singing of kumbaya? --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:23, 24 March 2009 (UTC) </smallHmm.... WP:KUMBAYA ... interesting concept ;-)

break

I've got to add: this argument I keep hearing (about how two neo-nazi editors, or fringe editors, or anti-fring editors, or anti-semitic editors, or... write some biased page and claim that it has consensus) only makes sense when there is a miscomprehension of the word consensus. one can't claim consensus, one can only have consensus. the point of this policy should not be to try to make some nit-picking rules about what constitutes consensus, but to refocus editors on the ideal of consensus. everyone knows that the perspective of two neo-nazi editors doesn't represent a universal consensus - even those neo-nazi editors would know that - writing more rules to try to enforce that kind of common sense will just give the people who want to POV-push more loopholes to abuse.
I thought this edit I made here (or maybe with butwhat's revisions here) actually captured the ideal fairly well. it got reverted (for reasons that had little to do with the change itself), but don't you think this works better than what's there now? --Ludwigs2 16:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
I can't figure out why you want to make this section to imply, or maybe order, that consensus trumps all other core policies. Are we supposed to come to a consensus on what constitutes NPOV? I can't even imagine how consensus will help. Let's use your example. What if three or four NeoNazi editors want to use some genetic study published by Shockley that says Blacks or Jews are inferior races? A publication by Shockley may, on the surface, be a reliable source. But it isn't, being trumped by thousands of other reliable sources, that make Shockley's work truly fringe. It would be hard to reach consensus to use the article or not. But I can tell you that it violates FRINGE, RS, WEIGHT and a whole host of other guidelines, and reaching consensus will never obviate the core principles. Worse yet, this happens across a huge number of articles. Consensus should only be used come to an agreement on non-fringe issues. For example, I was involved in an FA article where there were conflicting theories about a scientific event. Consensus was reached how to discuss these theories in the order of acceptance in the scientific community. None of the theories were fringe or whacko, even though I think that one of the theories, which has gained popularity, doesn't make sense, it was presented by important scientists. This is where consensus works, once it's established that the competing viewpoints are both within the more important and critical guidelines. I rarely agree with Kim Bruning, but he is completely right here.OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 17:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
This is the crux of the misunderstanding, and why the section as currently written is wrong. Consensus doesn't trump other policies because policies are formal statements of consensus positions. But consensus can still change even when it's outlined in a policy.
For one thing, the wording of a policy can change in a way that does not represent consensus -- in fact, we're having an argument over just such a point right now. And even a completely-agreed-upon principle outlined in a policy may be ignored in cases where it is deemed appropriate. It ultimately boils down to the fact that consensus is not some absolute, permanent thing: there are only degrees of consensus, and transitory ones at that. One can nonetheless evaluate whether a consensus between one group of editors is likely to contradict a consensus forged between a different group of editors: broadly speaking, anybody completely disregarding NPOV or V is likely to go down in flames sooner or later.
This is what we need to explain.--Father Goose (talk) 18:48, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
yes, Father Goose, that's it. Policy is policy because darned near everyone agrees that the principles outlined in policy are good ideas. that's consensus in action. people might (and do) argue about what a neutral position is, but I have yet to meet anyone who thinks that the encyclopedia would be better off if it decided not to be neutral. Policies and guidelines like FRINGE, RS, WEIGHT (to borrow OM's list) and etc, are shorthand: basically they say "we've all (more or less) agreed that (as a general rule) these are/aren't the kinds of things that belong on wikipedia", and we can oppose questionable additions (like Shockley's work) on those grounds alone. if the neo-nazis (or whomever) want to make an argument that this kind of work actually does belong on wikipedia, that's fine - we can listen to that, and if they make a good enough case maybe we'd come to a new consensus (unlikely in that case, but who knows?).
the strength of consensus as an ideal is that it forces people to commit to the process. if we make rules and try to enforce them authoritatively, we're always going to have people breaking them, gaming them, or abusing them. that's just the way it is; some people are allergic to authority and some people are addicted to it, and there is endless amounts of conflict built into that dynamic. but if we say to someone 'look, show me what you want to add, convince me that it's worth adding, and we'll discuss how best to add it', and make it so that they feel like they might actually have a chance at convincing us, things will work out much better. if they succeed they succeed, they'll be happy they convinced us even if it's a vast compromise from what they originally wanted. if they fail to convince us they'll be far less inclined to act out about it, because it will be much clearer from the discussion why their viewpoint doesn't meet the necessary standards. consensus is a win/win. --Ludwigs2 20:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
‘Consensus is not immutable.’ I quite agree; but stated that way, it seems insufficiently informative for the subject and a four-word sentence. I looked up the word to make sure, since it is less than common. This page is a little out of my league, but I suggest either linking ‘immutable’, or changing ‘immutable’ to a less-precise but simpler ‘immovable’. Alternatively, describing what it is, rather than what it is not, might be better still. ‘Consensus can/may/does change.’ Take your pick, those three word sentences seem more informative to the average Ed. Each is more elegant than presently stated; they look much better for the page subject, as well as from a subject, verb and direct object point of view. Regards, CasualObserver'48 (talk) 08:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Consensus can change is already the headline of the relevant section. Taemyr (talk) 09:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
that's an interesting point, actually. maybe that calls for more description - something like: "Once a proper consensus has been established about the content of a page it should carry a certain weight and authority. Changes should should be made slowly and with care, with due respect for the efforts that went into establishing the given version. However, no consensus should ever be considered absolute or final, and editors should always allow the possibility that consensus over content might change." --Ludwigs2 18:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Once a "proper consensus" has been reached (what's that?), it carries as much weight as a house made of straw. Remember those Neo-Nazi pov pushers that people are using as an example in this thread? Well, they have no right to just cordon off a part of the wiki and dig in. Rather, (to mix metaphors) a single lone-wolf user has to be able to come by and be able to blow their house down. ;-)--Kim Bruning (talk) 22:19, 20 March 2009 (UTC) This is an effect of wikiality. People want to change the rules to say what they feel with their hearts, as opposed to documenting pragmatic best practices that ensure that we actually have a functioning encyclopedia.

Eliminate entire section? part three

Kim Bruning wrote: "This is backwards. Wikipedia policy is defined by consensus, not the other way around. If you write that consensus implements policy, or acts within policy, or other things in that vein; you end up with a circular argument."

It is only circular if one assumes that the section means pages in article name space and Wikipedia name space. If the section was to be altered to indicate that it means consensus over the name and content of articles then it is not circular as polices and guidelines are not articles. I think that the section is useful and therefore should be kept, but if Kim thinks it is circular then an additional sentence can be added to explain it is referring to consensus over the name and content of articles. --PBS (talk) 11:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
No it's circular even when you restrict yourself to article space. This because consensus about articles are the most important source of policy. Taemyr (talk) 19:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
That, and Policy, Guideline, Essay and other wikipedia: namespace pages are basically wiki-articles about the current state of wikipedia consensus. I thought the edit-tab made that fairly obvious? ;-) *
Though you are right that they do describe the consensus about name and content of articles... since writing articles is what we're here to do after all.
--Kim Bruning (talk) 19:42, 18 March 2009 (UTC) *If we didn't eat our own dog food, how much could we be trusted?
Taemyr I do not understand what you have written, please explain in more detail. --PBS (talk) 20:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Pr WP:Policy, the best way of changing policy is to document existing practices. Ie. our policies are the way because that is the usual outcome of discussions. Taemyr (talk) 03:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
It is meant to be a positive feedback loop. For most instances editors follow policy and guidelines, and consensus over articles is applying policies and guidelines. This is something that happens every day in hundreds of debates. Making substantive change to policy is relatively unusual compared to the number of articles that are changed to comply with Wikipedia policies.
IMHO as policies have become more mature they have become less contradictory and as such have become more complementary to each other. An example of this was the addition to the naming conventions in the middle of last year of the concept of using reliable sources in English to determine the what is the most recognisable name (and reliable sources are defined as the sources section in WP:V). This could not have been done when the naming conventions were first drafted because WP:V did not exist. This interlacing makes it less common than it was that there are substantive changes to any one of the core content policies.
As a general rule consensus is built around agreeing what policy is and agreeing to change an article to comply with those policies (the section we are debating was describing that). The reason it is agreed that it is considered a good idea to ask more editors for an opinion over a content dispute in an article (RfC requests etc) is to pull in enough editors to reflect what the majority of editors agree is policy, as policy reflects what the majority of editors agree is preferred practice among editors. One sees this all the time when editors in a debate about article content quote polices and guidelines. I think that the section we are debating should be kept with the wording as it was in January and February with an additional phrase that it is consensus over articles which is being discussed if Kim and others think that otherwise it is a circular argument. --PBS (talk) 11:13, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Going for win-win

I hope it's edible!

The best (or even only) way to gain consensus is to seek out a way to win-win. :)

I've replaced:

"by applying the Wikipedia's policies and guidelines in the best possible way. "

with

"If you are unsure of the state of consensus on a particular subject, we provide comprehensive documentation on historically achieved consensus, which we call our policies and guidelines pages."

I think this is a good win-win wording. In some ways it is actually stronger than the original, because it suggests that if you don't consult policy pages, you're simply not going to get your way. At the same time, it stresses the primacy of consensus, and the fact that policy and guidelines are arrived at by consensus.

Just to make your day, I've also gone and given more depth and reasoning.


If this doesn't make all sides happy (except for the "make it as short as possible" crowd :-P ) , I'll eat my hat. ;-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:54, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Overall, I think that nearly all of the recent changes have moved this page in the wrong direction. This pretty much tells editors to ignore any policies they don't like. Please remember that we write these pages to be intelligible to total newbies. "Just ignore it" or "take it with a grain of salt" isn't helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:30, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree. For whatever that is worth. Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 03:48, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
I think it is a big step backwards. Much better to keep the wording as of January and if people are concerned about circular arguments, add a phrase that it refers to specifically to articles. --PBS (talk) 10:37, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
It's probably a good idea to get total newbies to understand that we work by the spirit, not by the letter of the rules. I don't really mind how we put that forward, as long as we do, and as long as we don't suggest that we work by the letter.
I'd much rather see that people make mistakes while working within the spirit of the rule, than that they get into the huge trouble you can get into by trying to "enforce the letter".
Working by the letter of the rules is an anathema to soft security and is therefore not a best practice. --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:14, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
@whatamidoing: I don't quite see how the recent edits I made would give people the impression that they should simply ignore policy they didn't like, quite the opposite. Could you explain how could a person draw the conclusion that they can ignore policy from that wording? How could the wording be improved to remove that impression?
@Philip Baird Shearer: And while of course consensus is primarily about articles, consensus is also involved in policymaking, since policies are nothing other than documentation of consensus. Didn't we cover this years ago? I had the impression you wanted to abolish consensus or something, didn't you? --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:58, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Kim, you practically define 'the spirit of Wikipedia' as ignoring all the rules, despite that being only one of five core principles (and also the single most frequently misunderstood one). How does this definition help people understand that 'the spirit of Wikipedia', in the form of hundreds of admins, will remorselessly block editors for breaking any number of rules? How does that help an editor understand the difference between rumor-mongering and encyclopedic work? How does that help a POV-pushing editor understand that his POV cannot dominate all others? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
As I understand it, the only value to rules on wikipedia is that they help us maintain an environment where editors can come to consensus about article content in relative peace. honestly, on an (arguably mythical) article where editors are behaving civilly and taking content discussions seriously, rules are completely unnecessary and would just get in the way. that is the spirit of wikipedia. Policy and guidelines should be seen (IMO) as standards for what 'taking content discussions seriously' means in practice (worked out by consensus among previous editors); they are fences to guide editors in the right direction, not clubs to beat them into submission. IAR is designed precisely to short-circuit editors who get too legalistic about rules; it's not so much definitional as a way of telling someone that they are taking rules more seriously than content, and that that is pointless. what we want to be encouraging editors to do is to take content discussions seriously so that a reasonable consensus can be reached about content. that will solve all of the problems you've listed. --Ludwigs2 04:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Then your understanding of why Wikipedia has rules is significantly incomplete. To name one obvious example of why we have (and enforce) certain rules, rules exist to reduce the likelihood of Wikipedia getting sued. Compliance with even some "mere guidelines" is absolutely mandatory on these grounds (see, for example WP:ELNEVER's blanket ban on linking to websites that infringe copyrights). If enforcing this rule means metaphorically beating an obstinate editor into submission (and compliance with laws), then that will have to be done -- even if doing so limits our content. Some rules must be taken more seriously than content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:30, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
You actually have it backwards, there. The possibility of getting sued over content is something that every encyclopedia has to face, and it is certainly part of taking a content discussion seriously. E.g. editor A says "I'd like to add this content"; editor B says "I understand why, but if you add that Wikipedia might get sued" - anyone taking the discussion seriously is going to recognize that wikipedia getting sued is useless (it will cost WP money, and the content will get removed anyway). if an editor persists, then the consensus would be to remove the content over his objections. no rule means anything except where there's a consensus that the rule needs to be applied.
the problem with your approach is that you start with the presumption that editors will not participate seriously or reasonably in the consensus process, and so need to be controlled authoritatively from the get-go. granting that this is true of some editors, we are obliged to assume those are aberrant cases. I mean, if we start with the assumption that everyone's a troll we might as well throw out Consensus, NPOV, Civility, and most of the other core policies, ban all IP editors, and force all registered editors to sign a wiki-loyalty oath before letting them do anything. that doesn't sound like a nice place to visit, much less something that will produce a decent encyclopedia. --Ludwigs2 06:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
No, I start from the perspective that experienced editors aren't going to be reading this page, because they already know how collaborative editing works.
I also bring to this work the experience of dealing with many total newbies that clearly and directly violate policies because they don't understand Wikipedia. Some (not all) of them turn into protowikilawyers that scour the policies and guidelines for any sentence that could possibly be twisted to make them "win". For example, I've had new editors tell me that external links to internet chat boards are acceptable, or even required, under the external links guidelines because they "contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources" -- namely other patients. I've dealt with people for small organizations whose "consensus among all editors on the page" solely reflects the views of the only two people that knew the article even existed, both of whom work for the organization and are writing it as part of their job.
This policy must not give inexperienced editors the idea that an agreement between a handful of editors at a single page trumps all other policies and guidelines: "I can do anything I want, as long as nobody pitches a fit on the article's talk page" makes Wikipedia's content worse, not better. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
You seem to be arguing my point for me. look, no one is doubting that you're an experienced editor, or that you've had these issues, or that you know what you're talking about. but (as I said above) you're focussing on problem editors as though they are the norm rather than the exception. your perspective is entirely negative (e.g. 'this policy must not give the idea...'). Go back and read the core principles: Wikipedia is an idealistic enterprise with an idealistic set of assertions, and it behooves policy to reflect the ideals (rather than worrying about how not to give the wrong idea - wrong ideas can be corrected if there are right ideals to point to). again, none of these editors you mention above are taking the content discussion seriously (they are fishing and angling and wikilawyering to get to some other goal), and frankly they could all be stopped by saying "I don't care what the rules are; this is about creating decent content, which is what isn't happening". both inexperienced and experienced editors would benefit from being shown exactly what taking a content discussion seriously means (because really, I've seen plenty of 'experienced' editors who never bother to discuss content at all, which is weird).
I'm going to try a revision along these lines - feel free to revert if you like, but if you do let's discuss it. --Ludwigs2 01:27, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
I think that your revision is rambling and verbose; that it wanders far from the stated topic (===Purpose===); that it fails to provide clear and unambiguous support for those widely accepted policies whose violation might not result in lawsuits; and that on balance it might be a slight improvement over the previous version.
And yes: in the real world, you write and enforce laws and policies to guide and even to control people that you can't trust to do the Right Thing™, not for those whose judgement is ideally formed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
WP:Consensus can not and should not provide the sort of clear and unambiguous support for policies that you want. This because policy does not override consensus. I am a bit more worried about what he says about those cases where the policy exists to conform with laws and/or foundation concerns. Because foundation decrees does override consensus, a clear example is the requirement of machine readable FUR.
Please read WP:AGF.
As for handling problem editors, that is treated in WP:Disruptive editing. Which notes that rejecting community input is disruptive.
That means that while a group of editors can agree to pretty much anything, when someone comes along and points out that there are heavy weight arguments for doing things in a different manner, they have to address those concerns. And while policies such as WP:NPOV does not override consensus, they are weighty arguments.
I find Ludwigs section good because it focuses on the fact that what we are seeking consensus about is how to build an encyclopedia. Taemyr (talk) 20:30, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
well, I was trying to strengthen the idea that foundation rules weren't just 'rules for the sake of having rules' but were actually something that anyone who thought about them would see were necessary. I can make that a stronger phrase, though, if you think it's best.
as far as being rambling and verbose... you may be right about it not being perfectly in the 'Purpose' category, but then I'm not sure 'Purpose' is the correct word to use at this point anyway. this is more along the lines of 'Meaning and Use', maybe? my goal was to try to show the place consensus has in the bigger wikipedia scheme of things. --Ludwigs2 01:36, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Kim you wrote "Philip Baird Shearer: And while of course consensus is primarily about articles, consensus is also involved in policymaking,..." Yes it is but explicitly separating out consensus over the content of articles and policy/guidelines, would stop the problems of a circular argument you consider existed in the useful wording that existed in January/February. You also wrote "you wanted to abolish consensus or something" it is or something, and is to do with what is done for RfA, AfD, RM processes and defining rough consensus. --PBS (talk) 11:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Previous consensuses

The following paragraph was recently added to WP:Consensus #Purpose, but doesn't seem to have anything to do with the purpose of consensus:

"If you are unsure of the state of consensus on a particular subject, look through Wikipedia's policy and guideline pages. These provide comprehensive references to consensuses that have been historically achieved on various issues. Like all wiki-pages, policies and guidelines are regularly edited and updated to correct omissions or provide more up-to-date information; they may change over time as well, so approach them with care and take them with a grain of salt"

I'm not sure what the point of this paragraph was: consensus applies to all Wikipedia pages, not just to policies and guidelines, so why single out policy and guideline pages? (Also, "consensuses" isn't a word.) For now, I removed it. Eubulides (talk) 05:34, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this tendency to think that consensus usually plays out on policy and guideline pages reflects the limited amount of actual editing that its proponents do. They (like me) tend to do meta-editing and perhaps forget that this system was chosen primarily because of its benefits for selecting content the main namespace -- not for designing policies or for creating a more cooperative-minded world. Individual articles may have never had any specific pre-existing consensus: they may be brand-new or have seen constant edit wars since their creation. And I don't think that policies like WP:V or WP:BLP should be "taken with a grain of salt." We don't have policies for the purpose of violating them whenever it would be more convenient, and these recent edits contradict WP:POLICY on that point. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:14, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Consensus plays out on normal wiki-pages. Just because I don't just edit specifically en.wikipedia.org all the time , doesn't mean I don't edit wikis ;-)
Policy pages document stuff that played out on our main content pages. Otherwise, what's the point of having them? And they are wiki-pages. Any wiki-page can be vandalized or contain inaccurate information, so don't take them as holy writ.
Take WP:V with a grain of salt, especially with regards to WP:RS. You can get a fairly reliable wiki even without WP:V, as several other language wikis have proven.
Take WP:BLP with several barrels of salt, it has seen several failures over time.
But blindly following ANY policy will get you into hot water. So it is best practice to take care and turn on your brain, and to use that brain. After all, we have Wikipedia:pywikipedia for things that can be done blindly without thinking. ;-). We need our volunteers for tasks that require such human things as thought and compassion.
I don't think we contradict WP:POLICY at all... isn't there this tag at the top that links to WP:COMMON? :-P --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
  • From WP:POLICY: "Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard that, with rare exceptions, all users should follow."
  • From Kim: "It is often sufficient to simply treat the policy pages as a guide, and to simply act within the spirit of wikipedia (Ignore all rules)."
These statements indicate a noticeably different level of respect that should be given to the community consensus as represented in policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
(e/c) Try this quote from the very top of the page (correct at time of writing; permalink).
"This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that should normally be followed by all editors. Any edit to it should reflect consensus. Consider discussing potential changes on the talk page first."
Note where "normally" links to.
Please recheck your previous statement. --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree with WhatamIdoing and still think that the wording from January/February should be re-instated with a mention of articles if Kim still thinks it is a circular argument. --PBS (talk) 11:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
You and I, we have a long-standing disagreement on whether Consensus has primacy. I'm sure you realize that your proposed wording would be more than just "removing circularity" :-P --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
My reason for suggesting a modification so that it applies to article space is because I understood from what you wrote on 13 March at the start of the section "Eliminate entire section?", that your reason for removing the section was "... you end up with a circular argument. Since the entire section is illogical, I'll remove it for now. ..." Are you now arguing that there is something else wrong with it (other than the circular argument)? If so what? -- PBS (talk) 19:18, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Transparency

Many dubious understandins of consensus arise from the fact that an important trait is not mentioned explicitly in the policy: consensus may be achieved in a transparent way, i.e., one cannot simply claim that "we have a consensus here": the arguments and counterarguments which have led to consensus must be readily avaliable for scrutiny. For example, once the requirement of transparence is declared then the issue of "off-line consensus" becomes moot: by talking off-line one may polish their agruments and present them at the talk page. But afterwards the rules "consensus may change" and "'violates consensus' is not valid rationale for making or reverting an edit" kick off.

Please, someone with good command of English, suggest the phrase about transparency. - 7-bubёn >t 17:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

That's already pretty good! :-) Add to that that if the arguments aren't all mentioned, you can also request that people elucidate them. "No (further) replies" is a valid rationale to ignore someone's position. :-/ --Kim Bruning (talk) 18:02, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
"No further replies" can also be a indication that the editor believes that the first dozen times that the same simple statement was explained to you should be sufficient, and the editor is writing you off as a troll. There are only so many times that people are going to say something like, "You may not use this Wikipedia article as a platform for promoting your personal idea because it violates WP:NOR and WP:NOT#OR" before they're going to quit "explaining" basic facts to a person that stubbornly refuses to accept them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
Only if there is an exact repetition of moves with exactly the same editors on both sides, which is an exceedingly rare scenario. In all other cases, you (sadly) write off the non-replyer because they are not taking part in the consensus process. (In fact, this is trivially non-negotiable, because a lack of participation in negotiation is de-facto non-negotiable :-P )
In the case where you have to patiently explain the same thing over and over again to a different new editor each time, well, there you have little choice. The dude(tte)s have to learn sometime, after all.
Or do you feel that in that case it's appropriate to ban the new editor from that discussion? <innocent look>
--Kim Bruning (talk) 21:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
I think that when you have told a user a dozen times that, for example, adding a link to their personal, non-expert blog to an article that they like is prohibited by the relevant guideline and they keep doing so, then a block is entirely appropriate. I also think that if you have a conversation that runs like this one:
1: I've removed your blog because Wikipedia doesn't want a blog about your pet in an article about its breed.
2: But a lot of people like my blog.
1: That's nice, but it isn't encyclopedic, it doesn't help the reader understand more about the breed, and it's not permitted under WP:ELNO #11.
2: But a lot of people like my blog, and some of the blog is about the same kind of animal as this article, and people need to know more about this subject.
1: Snapshots of your puppy and chat about the cute thing it did last night simply aren't appropriate for Wikipedia.
2: But I think people will like it.
(repeat multiple times with slight variations) that giving up on trying to "patiently explain" is eminently reasonable. People that choose to not understand will not understand. This conversation could happen with all sorts of situations: businesses trying to promote their products (see Nasal irrigation for a current dispute), charities trying to "increase awareness" (you wouldn't believe how often fundraisers link to disease pages), individuals trying to share their personal experiences. At some point, it quits being reasonable to tell the same person the same thing over and over again. Eventually, it quits being "having a discussion" and starts being "feeding the troll". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Your example is the precisely "repetition of moves with exactly the same editor" that I made an exception for in my previous statement. That is to say: we agree. :-)
Just be straightforward and firm, and explain what kinds of help we do appreciate. This tends to stop the discussion pretty quickly.
A more common situation throughout the history of Internet and more recently in the history of Wikipedia is where *different* people (typically newbies) all ask the same questions in sequence; and people just Get Fed Up With The Constant Questions Already.
Now in those cases, despite being fed up, we can't let ourselves get angry. We need to put on our friendly faces, be patient and calm, and explain things carefully. This is how we educate new users. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 11:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarification needed

This is on the issue of consensus. I was under the impression that when there was an editing dispute, to prevent warring an article is retained in its most recent stable state i.e. a consensus is effectively need to make further changes to, either to add material or remove material? Can someone confirm this?

The problem is on a range of beer articles in regards to whether a certain external link should be included. The opinion is split as to whether it is relevant or not, and despite debating the topic for months no consensus as yet has been attained. To stop the edit warring, a stalemate was effectively declared where the link wouldn't be added to any of the pre-existing articles, and neither would they be removed from articles where the link was present before the dispute started. Is this the correct course of action?

There is of course a small minority who are going against this ceasefire, including an administrator. On one article he has removed the external link to the talk page for 'discussion' and said it will be re-added once consensus is reached (because that is 'normal for disputes'). The problem here is that I think he's using his position as an admin to enforce his viewpoint. One article inparticular (Beer styles) included the link for a whole 9 months before the dispute started, and was stable up to that point. In my interpretation of Wikipedia policy consensus is required to remove the link from the article, just in the same way it is required to add a link to further articles. If all the links are removed until a consensus is reached for including them, then effectively that is just a unilateral decision to remove all the links because the other side of the debate don't have to agree to anything since they get exactly what they want - the removal of the links!

So I would appreciate clarification:

  1. Does Wikipedia consensus apply to changes to an article or to including material?
  2. In a conflict, is the proper course of action to retain the article in its most recent stable state, or to just remove the disputed material?
  3. If an article included the link for 9 months without being contested, is that regarded as the most recent stable state of the article?

Any views and opinions much appreciated, Regards, Betty Logan (talk) 10:56, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

In what way is he "using his position as an admin to enforce his viewpoint"? Unless he's editing a protected page or protecting a page that he's edited, I don't see how that can be the case. Anyway, your questions probably don't have any good answers, at least not any that actually have any force around WP. If there is no consensus (and for some people that means no unanimous agreement), then it's the law of the jungle. If rational argument has gone as far as it can and others are edit-warring to get their way, you just have to do the same. Or if you prefer, roll over and give in. For me this is a fundamental flaw in the Wikipedia decision-making model, but does anyone listen to me? --Kotniski (talk) 15:40, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I know you were advised at ANB to go here, but this isn't a dispute about the nature of our guidelines about consensus, it's a dispute over a particular link. The way of resolving it is to ask via WP:DR|Dispute Resolution]] for additional opinions on the article, or if the link might be of some more general interest, WT:EL. Whether what was done was reasonable depends upon the specifics of the matter. DGG (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Well I appreciate that the problem is over something specific, but the issue is over the interpretation of the rules. It's quite a legitimate question really, in general is 'consensus' applied to edits or material? If it's edits that means a consensus is required to make changes to an article including removing material, if it's material then that means that anything that is not agreed upon comes out anyway. If it is the latter case then the dispute I'm part of would be resolved very quickly. If we had some clarification in a general sense then maybe it would appease the situation. The whole point of having rules is to resolve situations, but when no-one agrees what the rules are then there is an obvious problem and as a result a lot of edit warring... Betty Logan (talk) 20:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
the problem is actually very difficult. 'consensus' (as I understand it) really means that editors reach an agreement about the content that should be present in an article - it's not consensus about particular edits or changes, but consensus about the total product itself. however, the concept absolutely requires that all participants be committed to the task of creating the best article possible. when they are, these kinds of issues work themselves out easily and quickly (because participants always recognize what is and isn't fair in a given context). on wikipedia, however, I'd say a good 20% of all editors are agenda-driven and uninterested in the quality of the article from an abstract point of view. under those conditions, you might as well not even talk about the rules or meaning of consensus; people are going to take whatever rules or meanings you provide and game them to achieve their own ends. the rules of consensus only matter where people are actually interested in working towards it, if you follow my drift. --Ludwigs2 21:04, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, precisely. And that percentage of agenda-drivens can only keep increasing, as the well-intentioned editors drift away from the project in disillusionment. --Kotniski (talk) 06:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


Wikipedia:Advertising discussions

Please see Wikipedia:Advertising discussions, a proposal I've made to formalise guidelines on where and how the largest discussions should be advertised around Wikipedia to ensure sufficient input to major discussions. Improvements to the page and input on the talk page would be appreciated. Carcharoth (talk) 10:49, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

What is consensus?

As many of you are likely aware, there was another RFC recently on whether or not to link dates and whether or not to have auto formatting in articles. On the issue of linking dates, I believe the consensus is largely clear (we need further clarification on the details perhaps, but the overwhelming attitude appears to be represented here). On the issue of auto formatting, there is, I believe, no consensus (as explained partly here). As I don't believe consensus is established through strictly by-the-numbers polling (and even if we go by the numbers, we have 287 opposing auto formatting as compared to 209 supporting; that's "no consensus" to me) I'm looking for additional input here. WP:CON seems clear on this to me, we need to discuss this further before implementing anything from this RFC, but others appear to be trying to take a "we won" approach to the results (particularly regarding auto formatting). —Locke Cole • t • c 20:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not following this saga in detail any more, but as I understand it, the "support" was for not the existing (and now deprecated) method of autoformatting, but for a new concept of autoformatting that doesn't require links. There is therefore nothing to "implement" as a result of this RFC. If you can keep talking and eventually convince the community that this new autoformatting makes sense, then that will be time to implement something (namely the new autoformatting in whatever form it gains acceptance). --Kotniski (talk) 08:30, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes the nature of the problems makers it necessary to go one way or another, and the usual way of reaching consensus in a divided situation by compromise is not feasible. We still need some way of making decisions. DGG (talk) 02:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
There should come a point though where members of the community who are unwilling to discuss compromise solutions (because they insist on it being their way) should be sanctioned for holding up discussion that could resolve the matter in a peaceful way. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Is a FAQ a Policy?

There is a dispute on the status of a "Frequently Asked Questions" page for a Policy: should the FAQ of a Policy be a Policy itself, or a Guideline to the relevant Policy. I've set up an RFC to discuss the issue on the disputed FAQ. The Policy is WP:NPOV and its FAQ is Wikipedia:NPOV/FAQ. All input is definitely welcome! Dreadstar † 00:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

see also

Warnock's Dilemma as further reading? 79.101.174.192 (talk) 18:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Interesting article but the relation to this page is a bit of a stretch. Maybe at WP:Silence is consensus as a contra. –xenotalk 13:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Is consensus compromise?

An issue has arisen on how to deal with divergent opinions regarding article content, specifically what does consensus mean: [3] The specifics of the discussion over content itself aren't relative on this specific talk page (I've provided the link to the discussion); I'll provide a brief overview as background to my question. It deals with the image of an inkblot of the Rorschach. Some people feel that image should not be there at all, others feel that it should be hidden, and others feel it should be placed at the top of the page. The latter position seems to be favored by about 70% of the involved parties. My question here isn't about how to use the image, nor am I arguing the merits or drawbacks of either position on this talk page. This is not the place for that. Rather, I am wondering about your opinions about how to approach this problem from the perspective of building consensus. Keeping in mind the following points about consensus (I've added the boldings):

  • Wikipedia:What is consensus? "Disputes on Wikipedia are settled by editing and discussion, not voting. Discussion should aim towards building a WP:consensus. Consensus is a group discussion where everyone's opinions are heard and understood, and a solution is created that respects those opinions. Consensus is not what everyone agrees to, nor is it the preference of the majority. Consensus results in the best solution that the group can achieve at the time. Remember, the root of "consensus" is "consent". This means that even if parties disagree, there is still overall consent to move forward in order to settle the issue. This requires co-operation among editors with different interests and opinions."
  • "A consensus can be found by looking for common ground and synthesizing the best solution that the group can achieve at that time.""
  • "[4] "Consensus is a broader process where specific points of article content are consiered in terms of the article as a whole, and in terms of the article's place in the encyclopedia, in the hope that editors will negotiate a reasonable balance between competing views, as well as with the practical necessities of writing an encyclopedia and legal and ethical restrictions."

It would seem that the ideal way of approaching this would be to come up with some sort of compromise that would take into account various viewpoints, rather than just go with the majority's preference 100%. In other words, the article should reflect respect for the various viewpoints, a synthesis, the product of negotiation, and a balance beteen competing views taking onto account legal and ethical restrictions. In other words, the article shouldn't simply be the majority's version but should incorproate some input from the minority. Attempts at compromise have been successfully made and the article had been stable with a compromise version for a long time, several months at least. Now, however, there have appeared claims that because the majority cannot be convinced of the minority's opinion, consensus does not mean taking that minority opinion into account at all when it comes to the article content; in other words, no compromise, because the minority cannot convince the majority that it is right. To me, this seems like reducing consensus to a vote, rather than working on a solution all parties can accept which seems to violate what consensus is. Am I wrong here? Any comments would be most appreciated. Respectfully,Faustian (talk) 23:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Consensus is not unanimity; in some cases it may mean compromise, in others compromise is inappropriate: not all issues admit of a compromise solution, and not all minority viewpoints deserve any recognition at all. I don't know the details of this case, but if it's true that (as it says at the page xeno links to) two editors have been continually pushing something for two years against consistent opposition, I tend to find that sort of thing harmful and disruptive. There comes a time when consensus must be acknowledged to have been reached, and those who disagree must simply move on to other pastures. I've begun to realise lately that Wikipedia is a wonderful feeding ground for trolls and others who, in wasting their own time on endless beating of dead horses, succeed in making others waste vast amounts of their time too (time that could have been spent improving Wikipedia).--Kotniski (talk) 18:38, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
As one of the the "two editors" I have to say that the ratio is not 2 versus everybody but rather 1:2; meaning that 1/3 of the editors support one way of doing things and 2/3 support a different way. Although 2 editors have been particuallty active over the years they are far from alone (if they were, it would be a diferent story). As a principle, should we attempt to integrate the positions or not?Faustian (talk) 04:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Agreed that sometimes one firm uncompromised position will be the consensus: as in the decision to not accept spoilers in plots. But this still eaves the problem that all decisions need to be looked at occasional: there is a difference between stability of decisions, and irreversibility. I hope we never will have spoilers in plots, in future years, people might feel otherwise, and they have the right to do so. DGG (talk) 19:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
In general, in discussing consensus, positions that conflict with WP policy should be discounted. And in this case one side of the argument seems to conflict heavily with the usual interpretation of WP:NOTCENSORED, which is that we write and present articles (a) on the assumption that the reader wants to read and see everything relevant to the topic (b) without regard to what external organisations would like us to write. See eg Talk:Autofellatio#RfC: Should the human image be placed in a drop-down/toggle box. Rd232 talk 19:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but what about the importance of negotiating "a reasonable balance between competing views, as well as with the practical necessities of writing an encyclopedia and legal and ethical restrictions." While certainly wikipedia is not bound by external ethical considerations, it is not obligated to ignore them either. Would it be appropriate to try to achieve a balance, in which ethical considerations are taken into account without violating wikipedia prohibitions against censorship?Faustian (talk) 04:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
(re Kotniski) Consensus is closer to unanimity than it is to a simple majority. Consensus should be, when at all possible, when the concerns of all editors are addressed as much as is reasonable without tilting the individual points too far one way or another. For some topics of discussion this may not be possible (whether a source is valid for example, or whether a subject is presented with a neutral point of view). For yet others it should be possible to work out compromises (designing templates, proposing changes to the MediaWiki software, etc). But simply saying in a discussion where 100 people support one way of doing things and 101 people support another way that the way endorsed by 101 people has "consensus" is unhelpful. Consensus is not and never should be a simple majority. —Locke Cole • t • c 17:12, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
we are discussing consensus in applying WP policy. Therefore, to say we discard opinions not consonant with WP policies does not really help that much. Anyone with experience here can find some among our contradictory policies to yield almost any desired result. In a system where the basic policy is IAR, there are no fixed rules , since improving the encyclopedia can mean anything anyone thinks it should mean. No reader wants to see everything relevant, which in the case of rorschach tests consists of most of modern psychology. And though we disregard what external organizations want us to write or not write, we do not disregard what our editors want to write and not write. (Incidentally, I completely agree with keeping in this illustration. Now, let me ask, should we include all the others in the current standard set?) DGG (talk) 04:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
On the one hand, true. On the other hand, needing to draw on WP:IAR is a simple bright line for limiting interpretation of what policy actually says. Rd232 talk 07:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Interesting. In the case of the article in question, over the past couple years 1/3 of involved editors have favored taking into account ethical considerations in some way. Do you feel that an effort ought to made to in some way not disgard their opinion?Faustian (talk) 04:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
I would imagine all of the involved editors consider their position to be "ethical". Many believe censoring Wikipedia to be highly unethical. And the fact that we have had the stable NOTCENSORED policy for years implies that the consensus among the community as a whole is against this kind of restriction of content. So even if the discussion itself only involved six editors, the consensus among the community as a whole can be presumed to be even stronger. That's why we have policies and guidelines: so that people don't have to be present at every discussion - the community's views on certain issues are presumed to be already known and should be respected.--Kotniski (talk) 08:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Agreed. Two issues, however. Firstly, there are exceptions when censorship should and does occur. There are no images (I'm talking about legal ones such as drawings) on the Pedophilia page, for instance. Secondly and more importantly, there are gray areas where interpretation of censorship differs. While everyone would agree that banning an image is censorship, is hiding an image (i.e., requiring a click to see it rather than displaying it automatically) censorship? Is having a representation of an image rather than a photograph or scan of it censorship? (for example, most articles on sex positions have pictures, especially of classical art rather than porn photos - see Oral sex or Missionary position) Is image placement - placing an image in a section of the article devoted to that image, instead of in the lead - censorship? I'm thinking of some religious pages where where consenus has been to keep the images but to set them further down the page so that those who do not want to view the images have some forewarning, and can make a choice in the matter (see Talk:Bahá'u'lláh/Photo and Talk:Muhammad/images). Some people feel that an image placed further down is no more censored than would be a newspaper article printed on the second rather than front page, making such placement an acceptable compomise between those wanting to censor/hide/use an illustration/etc. and those wanting it out in the open. Others believe that this is consorship because it in some way makes the image not as accessible as it would be otherwise and that as a principal no deference should be given to anything remotely resembling censorship.
This is not, of course, the place to debate what is and is not censorship. Rather, it's a question of consensus. When we have differently held ideas about what is censorship (or even whether or not an exception ought to be made in the censorship rule) held by different editors, would consensus require a good faith effort to integrate or synthesize the various views and opinions on that particular article in some way. Is it appropriate for a 2/3 majority to dismiss the various opinions of a 1/3 minority if the majority feels based on their interpretation of NOTCENSORED policy or other rules that it is their right to do so and that the opinions of the 1/3 regarding NOTCENSORED policy are wrong?Faustian (talk) 14:07, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if any compromise is possible in the case you mention (either the image is shown in the place it should be for optimum informativeness, or it isn't). Any "compromise" might effectively mean abandoning the no-censorship principle, and thus giving in to the minority just as a reward for their annoying persistence. Personally I think WP should censor itself somewhat more than it does, but not in a case like this - the image isn't even offensive. Let it go, would be my advice (but experience tells me you won't...)--Kotniski (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
The position of the minority is not that the image is offensive but that it is harmful, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this page to discuss. And here we are back to the situation in which various editors have different opinions about what constitutes censorship - is placing an image in the section of the article devoted to the image rather than in the lead a form of censorship, or is it not? And is the censorship principal really abandoned when a compromise is made? My position seems to follow Wikipedia:What is consensus? "Consensus is not what everyone agrees to, nor is it the preference of the majority. Consensus results in the best solution that the group can achieve at the time. Remember, the root of "consensus" is "consent". This means that even if parties disagree, there is still overall consent to move forward in order to settle the issue." By including the controversial image but placing it in a section devoted to it we synthesize the views of those who feel it shouldn't be hidden with those who feel it should or that it should be replaced by a simulation of the actual image (something that is done in the sex position articles). Such a position is actually closer to the majority view (as it should be, because the minority should defer to an extent to the majority when making compromises) without being 100% the majority view, no compromise at all. You seem to feel that my reasoning is incorrect because in your opinion compromises should not be made with positions that are, according to you, clearly wrong to begin with. I see your point. If a majority knows that 2+2 =4 but a minority feels that 2+2 = 8, we shouldn't compromise and declare that 2+2 = 6, which would be the correct approach. Unfortunately opinions involving ethics and what constitutes censorship are not as clear as in mathematics which IMO calls for attempts at compromise and synthesis. I wonder what others think?Faustian (talk) 21:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
To use mathematics as a metaphor, it is a common case that the majority "knows" that 2+2=8. Can you imagine why?
Often several people have reached a consensus on a page, and some new person (perhaps a domain expert) comes along, and discovers that one detail is still not right ("That's silly, 2+2=4!"). The newcomer will obviously start in a position where they are the minority. CCC and BRD are likely to ensue.
So majority and minority are not correlated to being right or wrong.
To complete the logic, we should permit neither majority rule nor minority rule, because neither will provide the correct encyclopedic answers we are looking for. --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:23, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)On the issue of censorship (I don't have an answer on the consensus problem; I fear there isn't one, which is why beyond a certain size communities adopt some form of democracy or dictatorship): Part of the issue here is differing views of censorship (in general and in specific instances), and differing views of what impact different possible versions of WP censorship policy/custom might have. It would be easier to discuss these things if WP:CENSORED had its own page. It's currently part of WP:NOT and the discussion page for that is a bit overloaded, IMO. Disembrangler (talk) 10:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Ethical

I have just removed the word "ethical" from the policy. It was added on March 23, 2009 by User:Ludwigs2 and as far as I can tell, there was no discussion regarding ethical obligations, just some conversation about the expansive edit in general. This has expanded the scope of the policy far too much and brought a subjective term into the mix. See also Talk:Rorschach test#To be honest... –xenotalk 07:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Every little group has its own ethics, and that word in the policy has already been attempted to be used to enforce such outside ethics. If you are Muslim it is not ethical to show an image of the prophet, if you are a psychologist it is not ethical to reveal information about certain psychological subjects, if you are a militant vegan then it is unethical to say anything favorable about the meat industry. We have our own ethics, we call them policy and the common sense reactions of our editors. Beyond that we have legal counsel. Chillum 13:38, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
the reason I phrased it as 'legal and ethical' rather than merely 'legal' was to draw people away from wikilawyering into actual discussion of principles. the fact that ethics is a subjective term is a good thing: it forces people to discuss what is and is not ethical in a given situation, rather than trying to shout each other down over what is and is not allowed (which is what you get when you put too much focus on legalities). I think the policy is much healthier with the term added.
but, whatever... the fact that Xeno has confused ethics (which is a realm of philosophical investigation) with ethical obligations (by which I assume he means some form of absolute moral code, the way Chillum used it) tells me that any debate on the issue will be fruitless: it's just going to disappear down some pedantic rabbit hole, which will accomplish nothing except to frustrate everyone involved. it's a minor point, and I just don't care enough to care. --Ludwigs2 00:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Could you help us sort out how the word ethical in this policy informs the present case discussion I linked above? –xenotalk 02:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
sure, that's easy. the claim (as far as I can see) is that showing depictions of Rorschach ink blots will provide potential patients with information about the material they shouldn't have, which might change their responses if they are given the Rorschach test, which might lower the validity of the test and lead to poor diagnoses or misdiagnoses, with various potentially dire consequences. that is probably a valid ethical concern, but it's not really a concern that psychoanalysts share, for the following reasons:
  1. any interpretative analytic tool has to take into account the possibility that the client is not telling the truth or is actively faking a particular diagnosis.
  2. every interpretive analytic tool has a half-life dependent on its absorption into popular culture, and has to change periodically to account for the new meanings that get attached to it. (e.g. almost every average person in modern culture 'knows' what a cigar means in Freudian analysis, and so Freudian analysts know that a cigar no longer means what it meant in Freud's day,and interpret it entirely differently).
  3. If the psychological community was sufficiently concerned about the dissemination of these images, they wouldn't worry about controlling the old images, they would generate and test a new set of images, test and evaluate them, and distribute them to professionals under the guarantee that they not be distributed (which for all we know the psychoanalytic community has already done).
In short, the potential issues with Rorschach tests are well-known to the professionals who use them, and no professional worth his/her salt is going to rely on the test in a way that will endanger a client. your ethical concerns are well-meaning, but not really grounded in fact. now if in fact the RT was a heavily relied on test with definitive diagnostic value, and if in fact there was an effort on the part of psychologists to prevent the images from being presented to the public, then we would probably have to refrain from publishing the images on ethical grounds (not because of the risk to clients, but because we would have to respect the professional opinion that the images should remain private; we are not in a position to evaluate either). but it's not, and there isn't; you would have to find some way of convincing me (and others) that there is something more substantive here than a loose, non-professional opinion.
honestly, almost everyone is good-hearted enough not to want to cause harm, and if you can convince people that something is going to cause some harm most people will see the ethics in not doing it. but you have to give a convincing case that harm might be caused. you haven't given such a convincing case here, and yet you insist that others agree with you regardless, and when they don't you come to the conclusion that the problem lies with the concept of ethics itself and try to remove it from the conversation. which is exactly the problem. Ethics is something that people have to agree on, which takes discussion and consideration; insisting that people respect an ethic that they don't agree with - particularly when the grounds for your ethical position are as thin as this - isn't really ethics at all, it's borderline ideology. --Ludwigs2 07:06, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Some comments (and I will try to be brief, as this is not the Rorschach page): The Rorschach is not used only by analysts; indeed 80% of clinicial psychologists in assessment practice use it, only a small minority of whom are analysts. Generating a new set of images is not so easy. It would require decades of studies to get to the point where the Rorschach is now. This would also, of course, entail disgarding decades worth of good research - which is still ongoing - into the patterns of people's perceptions in response to the current images. Recently some interesting scales have been created and replicated that differentiate psychopathic from nonpsychopathic criminals. You are correct that good professionals will take into account the fact that due to exposure the results will be corrupted a bit. But this doesn't make that corruption okay. As for not wanting to cause harm, one of the more vocal proponents of including the images was candid enough to admit: ""...let's assume that, indeed, the test will be invalidated by this page and that that will cause the death of some 15 year olds. We really shouldn't care (in our capacity as wikipedians) how many 15 year olds commit suicide because of this article; preventing the suicide of 15 year olds is not part of the mission goals, nor any consensus approved guideline I can remember. What IS our goal, however, is to create the best articles possible."Faustian (talk) 14:16, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Faustian, and I add one more thing to his rebuttal. Ludwig, you said that you would respect the professional opinion of psychologists and that "we would probably have to refrain from publishing the images on ethical grounds if there was an effort on their part to protect the images." This is, in fact, the case. the preamble and section 9.11 of the American Psychology Association (APA) code of ethics makes a formal authoritative statement asking for help in maintaining the security of test material and "stimuli." and offering to help "educate... the public regarding ethical standards of the discipline [of psychology]." So, yes, there does indeed exist an ethical code of conduct. The question is should Wikipedia apply this ethic to our own code of conduct. I believe it should. So does Faustian. If you'd like to join us and help change the consensus, then please join us. Danglingdiagnosis (talk) 16:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
it wasn't my intention to decide this particular issue, and I'm sorry if it came off that way. instead, my intention was to point out that most people are naturally inclined to be ethical about things, and all they need is to be convinced that this course or that course is the ethical one. to that extent, consensus and ethics are intertwined: ethical considerations will naturally arise and naturally be satisfied in a consensus building process. for example, I am happy to entertain the idea that displaying these images might cause harm, but I'm simply not convinced by unrealistically hyperbolic statements about adolescent suicides, or by claims that the display of images that are already widely available on the web will have a significant impact. sorry, but as it stands it's just not a convincing argument that there is a real ethical dilemma. you don't need to convince me here (because I'm really not concerned with the outcome - doesn't matter to me whether the images get used or not), but on the talk page you are either going to have to get stronger arguments for your position, or you're going to have to start softening your tone and looking for compromise positions, otherwise you will never find consensus on that page.
that's all I care to say on the issue. --Ludwigs2 20:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Ethics are too debatable and non-standardized (i.e., lacking in consensus) to be included there, and we have already seen people try to justify ignoring clear consensus based upon bizarre claims that the decision is not ethical. Having it there serves no practical purpose and turns out to be just something for people to wikilawyer over. DreamGuy (talk) 18:55, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Not all ethical considerations are "too debatable." That's what compromise is for. There will always arise situations that no one has foreseen or bothered to write down. That's why we need ethics in our consensus discussions. I think it falls to WP:consensus, to serve as a forum for such situations. This is the value of consensus. It is a robust activity. The Swiss government executive branch functions well enough by it. (no single president) Perhaps we can, too. But perhaps not, if we are not able to bring ethical considerations into our discussions. Believe me, there are those who would like to remove all subjective thought from our actions. The desire for certainty is great in all walks of life, and especially in Wikipedia. It's fervent and prone to extremism. There are many who would like to be told what to do. Make it easy for me, please. Authoritarianism, throughout history and in much of today, is the most common form of government. Other forms of government (republics, representative democracy, consensus boards) can be messy. The pursuit of certainty, though admirable, will always fall short, simply because sometimes, there are no easy answers. It is at such times that we must make an ethical judgment. This need not be an individual activity. It can also be done in collaboration with others using consensus. Danglingdiagnosis (talk) 16:39, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
When people form consensus they will no doubt use their own ethics in making that consensus. Listing ethics as necessary for forming consensus is just a wide open door for people to ignore consensus by calling whatever they disagree with as unethical. It was rightly removed, and no amount of ignoring consensus can get it back. DreamGuy (talk) 17:30, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
If by "ignoring consensus" you mean that they will continue to engage in civil discourse, then yes, ethical arguments can do that. But as the project page says, consensus can change over time. It is not immutable. What we need to do is become more comfortable with this and not wish for certain and definitive statements. Trust the process. As President Obama reminded me yesterday about what Martin Luther King called "the arc of the moral universe: It's long, but it bends toward justice." Danglingdiagnosis (talk) 18:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Consensus can change, sure, but the arguments have been made on an article in which the consensus was overwhelming and very recently made -- as you well know, being active on that page. I trust the process, it's the people looking to ignore the process by adding weasel words to a policy in order to wikilawyer when they don't have consensus who need to trust and respect the process. DreamGuy (talk) 16:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
1/3 wanting one thing, 2/3 another thing and refusing to compromise with the 1/3 at all, with no agreement, is not consensus. It's just majority rule which consensus is not.Faustian (talk) 18:45, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
So because the side that disagrees with you can't get a completely unanimous decision because you disagree with them, you want to ignore what the strong majority of the people say and do whatever you say? That's wikilawyering at its most absurd. DreamGuy (talk) 19:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Here's the straw man making his appearance; nobody is demanding a unanimous decision. 1/3 is a significant minority who are utterly ignored. I am wondering what the opnion is among those uninvovled with this particular point, about where we draw the line. Policy is clear that on the one hand outliers can be ignored and that on the other hand 51% is not consensus.Faustian (talk) 14:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Enforcement policy -> Conduct policy

Please see WT:LOP#Quick thought. - Dank (push to talk) 20:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

RFC: Is Consensus a Compromise/Synthesis of Editors' Opinions or is it Discussion Followed by Majority Preference without Compromise?

Per Wikipedia:Consensus and Wikipedia:What is consensus? in a situation in which 1/3 expressed preference for one way of using an image, and 2/3 expressed a different preference, with respect to consensus do we integrate the opinions or do we consider consensus to mean hearing everyone out but going with the majoritry preference without integrating the minority's opinion? Examples in which synthesis occurred include the pages on Muhammad and Bahá'u'lláh where opinions of those seeking to suppress the images for religious reasons are balanced with opinions of those who want the images in, by placing images of those religious figures lower in the article rather than in the lead. I'm seeking opinions specifically on the nature of consensus...as a way of getting a few more opinions regarding this conversation: Wikipedia talk:Consensus#Is consensus compromise?.Faustian (talk) 13:51, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Background reading: Talk:Rorschach test/2009 consensus review, Talk:Rorschach test#The discussion, Talk:Rorschach test#Sections subsequent to 2009 consensus review, Wikipedia talk:Consensus#Is consensus compromise?
I've listed 14 editors who feel that the image should be suppressed however 5 of those have not edited in over a year and have very short editing histories. You've then got 6 editors who are acceding to compromise for the sake of compromise, half of those haven't edited in at least a year.
Meanwhile, of the 41 editors who disagree with suppression (not counting those who weighed in at the AN thread), only 8 meet the same metric of inactivity.
So, using these numbers, you have 9+3 vs 33 plus those who weighed in at the AN thread which bring the numbers closer to 75% against suppression of the image. I feel also that wide community support is against suppression of images in general, i.e. I maintain that the community's default position is that the most relevant image available ought appear in the lead of the article. As such, my opinion is that the bar at which we should make an editorial decision counter to the default is higher than 1/4 or 1/3 in favour.
At some point minority viewpoints will necessarily have to realize that they have not convinced the majority of Wikipedia editors of their point of view, especially when they are diametrically opposed.
I feel that I've said all I have to say on the matter. At this point, I'm going to withdraw (however feel free to make any additional clarification requests as necessary). When this RFC has run its course, if an uninvolved admin doesn't show up to make a call, please seek one at WP:AN to determine if the decision reached in my consensus review should be revisited based on what follows. –xenotalk 14:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Not all of the ones arguing against, say, hiding the image or using a fake image necessarily oppose moving it. The figure of 41 in reference to opposition to placing the image other than in the lead is therefore somewhat misleading. Indeed, when asked for clarification, only 9 of the 41 stated that they insisted on the image being only in the lead. But my RFC here isn't about the issue specifically but about what Consensus means, is it try to convince the majoritry, and if not go with the imajority, or ironing out a compromise?Faustian (talk) 22:11, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
My thoughts can also be found in the discussion above, on this page. My impression is that this is about one editor obsessively beating a now extremely dead horse, and it would be better not to participate further.--Kotniski (talk) 14:58, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Your impression is incorrect, as it is two or three editors quite active on one side (I am not event hemost active one) and perhaps six on the other.Faustian (talk) 22:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to enmphasiz that the question is about consensus in general, not just about this particular case. It could apply to the Muhammad article just as well. I hope people don't get distracted by the Rorschach stuff.Faustian (talk) 12:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes Kotniski. It is 3 people, not 1, obsessively beating a now extremely dead horse. The smell is getting rather bad. Perhaps they will believe this venue when they are told that consensus has gone against them, though I don't hold my breath as several independent parties have now confirmed this consensus and that has not convinced them.
Faustian, saying this is not about the dispute at Rorschach seems a little bit disingenuous considering the context, the state of the consensus there is clearly the topic of this discussion. Chillum 13:12, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
And the other side has what - 6 people also quite active? I'm here becuse I want to iron out what the consensus is on what consensus means. Let's seperate that from the issue of the Rorschach. This isn't about saying bad things about editors' supposed misbehavior ("bad editors - beating a dead horse") but about wikipedia policy. I want to confirm what wikipedia policy is with respect to consensus - is it compromise and integrating various opionions when constructing the article, or is it hearing everyone out and then going with the majority opinion without input from the minority in terms of how the article looks? Lets's not make this about me as an editor. Faustian (talk) 14:42, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Consensus should be regarding which existing guidelines and policies are applicable. Consensus, as I understand it, has nothing to do with what x/y number of editors believe should be in the text, directly. The existing guidelines and policies reflect 'Consensus', this means that discussions regarding article material are discussions regarding how 'Community Consensus' (as specified in guidelines and policies) are best served in the article in question. I believe that editors come here with an understanding of the definition of consensus which is not wholly compatible with what consensus means within wikipedia. Material reflects consensus when it lives up to the requirements of WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:NPOV as well as ancillary strictures such as WP:BLP etc. consensus has absolutely nothing to do with how many of the editors on the article say WP:ILIKEIT. As such, there should rarely be compromise, a compromise would constitute WP:IAR. Unomi (talk) 15:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
(ec)If 10 editors repeat the same arguments that are not based in a sound interpretation of policy then 1 editor who is able to argue that their position is in conflict with policy then that 1 editor reflects wider consensus. Obviously ensuring that the article reflects this consensus can quickly become a WP:CIRCUS. Unomi (talk) 15:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Thank you! Clearly, it seems that no compromise is necessary when doing so violates WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP and other policies. Now, what about if there is a difference of opinion between editors in which the above principles are not violated? In that case what in your opinion would constitute consensus?Faustian (talk) 15:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a better question to ask is; how does consensus speak to a situation where the two sides are diametrically opposed? –xenotalk 15:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Or when one side wants to compromise and one side refuses?Faustian (talk) 15:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
(ec)In practice what happens is that the idea that something violates those aforementioned principles is cast in doubt. In these cases there are the noticeboards: WP:NPOVN, WP:RSN and others. These boards *should* be able to help, sometimes though, involved editors will pontificate on those boards, perhaps trying to overwhelm the (often) neutral voices of the people who serve the boards on a full-time basis. I would say that the ideal solution, when faced with a situation where none of those policies are violated, would be to calmly discuss the changes and have involved editors articulate their position; Sometimes 'compromise' becomes a truly richer synthesis. I think the most important thing is to try to defuse adversarial communication; once editors become entrenched it can take a lot of work to restore a cooperative atmosphere. Early use of WP:MEDCAB can be invaluable as they are often levelheaded and genuinely interested in fostering an atmosphere that can defuse the tension. Often you will find that those most vocal adherents of untenable positions slink away in the face of persistent external input. Unomi (talk) 15:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. What about cases where the aforementioned principles are not the focus of the arguments?Faustian (talk) 18:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
While my consensus review covered the whole 4-year-long debate, I also can't help but overlook the fact that the most recent RFC focused on the issue of "Lead" or "Not lead". These are diametrically opposed. There can be no compromise between these two positions. And, the majority, as well as common practice, falls squarely on the "place the most relevant image in the lead" side - in my humble opinion. –xenotalk 17:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, ultimately when one side refuses to compromise we inevitably end up in a situation where the choices are diamterically opposed. If one side would prefer 10 of X and another side prefers 0 of X, and the latter refuses to compromise with a 5 or 3 even 1 of X, we eventually end up with a binary choice of either 1 of X or 0 of X. But in the wider context, however, there are plenty of compromise options available if one is willing to compromise. In my opinion we ought to weigh the numbers preferring each side when synthesizing the various opinions.Faustian (talk) 18:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
What about those who seek to show all of the inkblots? Should we compromise and only show half? Chillum 20:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Let's keep this focussed on the issue of consensus, not inkblots, and keep the latter issues on the Rorshcach talk page...however it woould seem that we ought to weigh various opinions depending on how many people support them in good faith. So if 3 people prefer 10 of X and 9 people prefer 0 of X, perhaps 2 of X would be a good compromise.Faustian (talk) 20:42, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Here's something I just posted on WP:NOT. You did ASK for comment, and this is mine:

    Sigh. No large organization of human beings makes decisions by the process that WP calls “consensus.” No government does, and the United Nations does not. The Supreme Court does not. Juries are small bodies, and even they deadlock, so consensus is not a realistically achievable goal for all cases even at this small size (and in any case, juries operate by repeated internal polling, so “consensus” for juries means only universal polling agreement, and is not the same thing as the term is used on Wikipedia). Nor do any professional societies or large businesses with boards of directors operate by consensus. (Nor does WMF itself in its own board-level decision-making, if you’re looking for denial-of-reality). Nor (more internally for en.wiki) does ArbCom. Going back to the “real” world, nor does the military, or any large academic organization, either publicly or privately funded. Not the American Bar Association or the American Medical Society or the United Association of Plumbers and Pipe-fitters. If you have some large organization of human beings which you think operates by consensus, state your example.

    What about Wikipedia? Well, it doesn’t actually operate by consensus, except in very small decisions involving two or three and never more than a handful of editors. It wants to. That is its ideal. Some people think it does. However, I’ve been here for 3+ years and seen many a large edit war during my 14,000 edits (see WP:LAME if you like this kind of thing; though these are mostly not things I've been directly involved in). Here, in any case, is what I see happening when many people are involved in any issue: 1) there is a lot of arguing, 2) this goes on until most people on one side are exhausted and give up, leaving the diehards. 3) These square off to see which side has the most wiki-juice (number of involved administrators and their supporters). Then the side with the most juice makes the changes it wants, and if 4) the other side reverts, they are accused of editwaring, breaking “consensus” and become subject to the many sacred accusations which have names like SOCK, CIVIL, COI, AGF, 3RR, EDITWAR, and so on. This gives some involved administrator a reason to block them, so they can no longer participate in the argument. Going to dispute resolution or RFC only results in more arguing of the same type. The worst edit wars where nobody can see to block enough of one side to settle the issue, go to ArbCom where consensus is not the mechanism, but rather arbitrators vote, and more often than not, disputants are topic banned, or banned altogether. That is not consensus. So that’s what REALLY happens on Wikipedia-- it's NOT a consensus, much of the time. SBHarris 23:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Sadly your comments seem quite realistic. And naturally, since experts on any given topic are going to be the minority, theirs are the opinions that most often get trampled. But it's no reason to stop trying, at least for a stubborn person such as myself : ). Still, even though we know true consensus doesn't always happen, I'd like to iron out what it maeans and try (even if it's a Quixotic effort) to reach it.Faustian (talk) 01:47, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Sbharris, that's how every "consensus" on wikipedia works as far as I can tell. People just camp an article, shoot down anyone who doesn't agree with them and never let anything change because there isn't "consensus" (i.e. their approval). When other people get exhausted, they leave the debate and now the campers cite the "previous consensus" to newer people. Basically, wikipedia rewards people for stubbornness and hide behind the "consensus" (Smallvillefanatic (talk) 20:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)).
it's almost impossible for a organization without top=down control to work in any other manner. The people who care most about the issues and stick with them will dominate the decisions. How else could it possibly be? The main reason it succeeds here to a tolerable level is because of the size--for any issue, there are likely to be a number of different people. Thus the smaller WPs are much more subject to extended POV editing. Most of the things wrong with decision making here would be solved by more general participation. And that is possible because we are relatively open to newcomers to discussions, because we explicitly reject outside status as a factor--that's perhaps the other main reason we succeed in actually producing something useful. DGG (talk) 03:27, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Maybe I overstated myself because of the frustration I've been having. What I'm talking about is the relationship between Ownership and consensus. Consensus is one of the favourite weapons of owners, since when they've driven everyone else off, they'll consider it creation of a consensus (Smallvillefanatic (talk) 17:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)).
Yes, it happens a good deal. It is more likely to happen the smaller the number of interested people in the first place. But, what do you think we can possibly do about it? Are we to appoint dictators? DGG (talk) 01:23, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
Like Jimbo, you mean? Is dictator what you call CEOs and department heads? Is there any large-scale enterprise that has succeeded in the history of humanity, where special people weren't in charge of making final decisions? Does WMF itself work by consensus, or does it have a CEO and board of directors?

This stuff is not just to fulfill legal obligations for corporations. The secret Manhattan Project had its Oppenheimer and Groves, and needed them. NASA went to the moon with people like Von Braun, James Webb, Gene Kranz, and many other names you may or may not know-- but with whom the buck stopped. WP is presently "the nuclear reactor where anyone can push buttons." The only reason it even halfway works is that the many meltdowns are virtual ones, and the radiotoxity rarely reaches the real world [Though not completely-- there was one guy who was detained at an airport because his Wiki BLP had been altered by a vandal to say he was wanted as suspected terrorist, and the doofus emigration person did a google web search on him and came up with (guess what?) his wikipedia entry on top].

So no, I'm not suggesting that WP do things any diffenently that any military, academic, government, scientific or business institution does them. I'm simply suggesting that it stop pretending it doesn't! Right now, small numbers of people with extra power on WP actually DO "own" and control final content in most WP articles. But their names aren't out in the open where you can see an organizational diagram. In fact, many of them are anonymous as far as real world identities. That doesn't change the reality of how this place works.

No, WP has NOT discovered some brand-new way for human beings to get stuff done, ever in the history of the world. What it HAS done is use the (already invented) wiki to allow collaborative rapid volunteer editing of certain kinds of content for an encyclopedia. The more difficult epistemological and governance problems, however, have NOT been solved. The present situation is some mad combination of World of Warcraft and historical Japanese feudalism-- warlords, vassals, samurai, peasants, political intrigue, and all. SBHarris 05:49, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

You've got a rather huge False Dilemma there, DGG. The opposite of wikipedia consensus policy is not dictatorship. (Smallvillefanatic (talk) 18:44, 13 June 2009 (UTC))

The overwhelming volume of comments can detract from consensus building, too. New and original ideas have been ignored in the Rorschach discussion because comments come too fast and furious. The chronological order of laying down of thoughts is not always conducive to allowing others into the fray. It's not conducive to reasoned discourse. Better would be a separate, point by point, discussion. Perhaps this could be done with separate pages with separate watch functions so we can be notified when someone adds a comment to a particular argument? We need to give others equal time. Perhaps we could program a limit to the pace, say 500 words per page per day? This could be a hard limit or a simple warning to slow down and share the road with others. Danglingdiagnosis (talk) 16:51, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

  • Consensus is not unanimity; in fact, it is normal for some to be unhappy with the consensus. It seems to me that to be a good Wikipedia editor, one must accept the fact that sometimes consensus will go against you. When an editor or a small group of editors continues to press their view even after consensus is clear, it becomes disruptive. Dlabtot (talk) 19:11, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Clearly consensus is not unanimity, and we can safely reject the dissent of outliers. On the other hand, nor is it a narrow majority. So where do we draw the line with respect to how many people need to take a side in order to compromise with that side? 1/3 of involved editors dissenting from what the majority wants (in this article's case, 20 editors) is not a couple of outliers.Faustian (talk) 12:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The people on the article in question are outliers, yes. And we've always said that a simple majority may be not enough for full consensus but that 2/3s is certainly enough. Even on the most uncontroversial topic the dedicated naysayers can usually round up about 1/3 of the people, even if those results aren't typical of the opinion of the project at large, just by canvassing and warring.
On top of that, many POV warriors specifically demand far more than what they actually want so that they can try to demand a compromise to be "fair" and hope to end up with what they wanted to end up with in the first place. If the compromise is a reasonable solution, then there will be a consensus to compromise. If there is no consensus to compromise, demanding a compromise is also an attempt to ignore consensus.
In other words, it's ridiculous for you people in a small minority to be so determined to ignore consensus that you are even trying to rewrite what consensus means. You guys long ago stopped having any sensible arguments to make and have devolved into purely disruptive edits to try to wikilawyer your way into getting what you want. It's absurd to say that 2/3s of people should be ignored to do what 1/3 of the people want to do. Pretty soon you'll be arguing that 90% isn't enough to establish consensus if you're in that 10% and that the 10% should do whatever they want... until you're only at 5%, and then you'll argue for that. It never ends with you. DreamGuy (talk) 13:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Your implied accusation of canvassing is wrong. 1/3 are clearly not outliers. Your implied accusation about editing in bad faith (" many POV warriors specifically demand far more than what they actually want so that they can try to demand a compromise to be "fair" and hope to end up with what they wanted to end up with in the first place") is also uncalled for, as are uncivil comments such as "You guys long ago stopped having any sensible arguments to make and have devolved into purely disruptive edits to try to wikilawyer your way into getting what you want." You accuse me of making disruptive edits, a false accusation that I ask you to retract. Your straw man statements about 10% and 5% are also false. Finally, the 1/3 are not seeking to ignore the 2/3, rather it is the opposite: the 2/3 ignore the opinion of the 1/3. It's unfortunate that you have chosen to turn what ought to be a discussion on policy into a series of personal attacks.Faustian (talk) 14:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I can understand DreamGuy's frustration here insofar as one could hardly term a 2/3 - 1/3 split a "narrow majority" as you do above. If you persist in such misrepresentation, you should expect some degree of reaction. Eusebeus (talk) 14:58, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I never referred to a 2/3 - 1/3 split as a "narrow majority" and indeed implied that it was not by stating that the policy clearly states that consensus is neither a narrow majority nor unanymity and that this situation is between the two. Please retract your claim about my "misrepresentation." Thank you.Faustian (talk) 21:18, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

When there is contention about the content of a page, you get unanimity, or as close to it as you possibly can. This is not impossible. Not even hard. Learn the art of compromise. ;-)

If you can't get unanimity, you can strike out those acting in bad faith( if you can prove it), and you have to show that it is practically impossible to attain consensus with those acting in good faith.

Your best option then is to perhaps not take the contended action at all. If a choice MUST be made (on wikipedia? that's practically never the case.), then you can take the choice that is least offensive to the most people.

If you have to take an action within a given time limit? Then the last poll taken before the time limit might have to do for now, but a poll is a shaky thing to build on.

Polls merely measure the current state of consensus. They are more useful to START a discussion, not to end one.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 09:08, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

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