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:::Well, the purpose of our policy pages is to aid the writing of articles. Not, in the first instance, to aid the writing of policy pages. [[User:Newbyguesses | NewbyG ]] ([[User_talk:Newbyguesses | talk]]) 06:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Well, the purpose of our policy pages is to aid the writing of articles. Not, in the first instance, to aid the writing of policy pages. [[User:Newbyguesses | NewbyG ]] ([[User_talk:Newbyguesses | talk]]) 06:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

::::Well, this talkpage has been missing a [[WP:TPG|header]] for some time. I've added <!- talkheader|search=yes|WT:CON ->. And as has happened from time to time, judging by some unfortunate section headings above, soon to be archived, editors old and new deserve to be reminded from time to time of [[WP:TALKNEW|some of the guidelines]], for courtesy. Cheers, [[User:Newbyguesses | NewbyG ]] ([[User_talk:Newbyguesses | talk]]) 09:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


== Trim up to the disputed sentence ==
== Trim up to the disputed sentence ==

Revision as of 09:30, 5 February 2012


"Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal." -- Jimmy Wales

more Collect and B2C edits

I reverted Collect again for another big edit, calling specific attention to a couple of new concepts he introduced without discussion. Born2cycle put it back and chastised me, and then removed one of the new concepts I complained about. And I haven't even got past the first two paragraphs. Such a big change to a policy is too much to digest, as they're been told before. Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a big change. It easily fits on one page and took me a couple of minutes to review. "A big change" is a very lame excuse to revert, especially when it's not a big change. Please give specific objections.

Use of the word "formal" does not introduce a new concept, both informal and formal are used in similar contexts on the page already. However, in this context...

Discussions on other websites, web forums, IRC, by email, or otherwise off the project are generally discouraged, and are not taken into account when determining formal consensus "on-wiki." In some cases, such off-Wiki communication may generate suspicion and mistrust.

... it's superfluous at best, and a bit misleading at worst. Regardless of whether the consensus determination is an informal discussion on a talk page, or through a formal process of some sort, off-wiki discussion are not taken into account. I presume no one disputes this, and this is all this is saying, and all it said before (Collect's version - with the "formal" removed - is just crisper). This is the older wording:

Discussions on other websites, web forums, IRC, by email, or otherwise off the project are generally discouraged. They are not taken into account when determining consensus "on-wiki", and may generate suspicion and mistrust if they are discovered.

Obviously just a copyedit, and a readability improvement, with no change in intended meaning as far as I can tell. Same with the rest of the changes.
In your rude (because they're not explained substantively) reverting edit summaries you also mention the "disparate" wording as a "new concept". Well, let's look at that.

BEFORE:

Try not to attract too many editors into a discussion. Fruitful discussions usually contain less than ten active participants; more than that strains the limits of effective communication on an online forum of this sort. Where large-scale consensus is needed then it should be sought out, otherwise the input of one or two independent editors will give far better results.

AFTER:

Fruitful discussions usually do not generally contain too many participants. It is difficult to reach consensus with a large number of disparate views involved.

Now, what's the objection to this? Collect's wording avoids the "how to" language (which we should avoid), without changing meaning or intent. It does remove the "less than ten" heuristic, which obviously was pulled out of someone's ass. And the previous wording is obviously talking about disparate views - if the views are not disparate, then there already is consensus! Actually, you can even argue disparate is superfluous here (but certainly not a new concept or a change in meaning), but I think it's a stylistic point, and it brings attention to the fact that a situation where consensus is developing involves discussion among people with disparate views. Why would you object to saying any of this?

Now, this was a significant amount of time and work to dig all this up and explain it, much more than it would for you to read and evaluate the entire change in question. To what end? Do you have an objection or not? What are these "new concepts" and what makes you think they're new? If you don't explain your objections substantively, then your revert is simply disruptive. If you wish, I can start a file on how often you do this... --Born2cycle (talk) 06:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The change was from being about too many editors to a version that seems to limit how many different views can be discussed. Seems like a bad idea. And that's all just in the first two paragraphs. Why not reword without changing meaning? Dicklyon (talk) 07:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Collect's version also says, "too many participants", which, as far as I can tell, has the same meaning as "too many editors". The following sentence refers to "a large number of disparate views", but this is obviously referring to the views of the participants/editors from the previous sentence, and explains why having too many editors is problematic in these situations. How is this a change in meaning? I suppose 2 or 3 people could in theory have 10 different views each on the same topic, but in practice we know that's not the case, and that's not what this is talking about. This is a reword with a bit of clarification but without any change in meaning. I'm really trying to assume good faith, but I have to tell you that I really feel like you're jerking my chain, and this isn't even my edit. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Collect's assumption that his changes are not substantive or deserve no discussion are leading to trouble. Out of respect for the many who are not wasting their time here, the editors on this page generally realize that it is better to be conservative about changes. I don't see why he wouldn't bring his proposal to discussion first, especially since he was seriously mistaken the first time about what constituted a change in policy in the eyes of others. I suppose if good faith were going to be questioned, that might be one to bring up, B2C, but you haven't mentioned that. --Ring Cinema (talk) 09:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My statements are true, and my edit summaries are accurate. Your ownership here is getting tiresome. I have seven times as many edits as you, though you appear to have a hold on reverts on this one page. Your contributions appear to be 20% on this page and on MoS/Film - I think if you engaged in other articles where you saw CONSENSUS at work, that would make things far easier. At this point, I count only you and Dick as being "many editors" here, whilst, I, Kotniski, Carol, B2C, SmokeyJoe, Brews, WAID, Jayjg, et al are now of no account? I rather think it is you who is fighting clear [[WP:CONSENSUS[[ at this point. I am sorry - this looks exactly like "tendentious editing" as defined here. Collect (talk) 13:29, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You may believe your statlements to be true, but a policy page is too important to expect other editors to just trust that your rewrite is a good thing. It would be better to say what's wrong and how you want to fix it, rather than expect us to figure it out from an edit summary and a long complicated diff. And having your changes vetted and approved by B2C only makes matters worse, as he has a long history of rewriting policy to suit his needs. Dicklyon (talk) 15:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted - two editors saying "nay" do not negate a clear consensus, Dick. And asserting that one editor does not count because he has tried to make changes before is ludicrous - I can not find any Wikipedia policy saying "editors who try to edit do not count when determining consensus" at all. Perhaps you can show me that bit in some policy somewhere? Collect (talk) 15:47, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Dicklyon, discussing the editor not the edit is breaking the first rule of working to achieve consensus on content? Have a spot of warm tea. Generally speaking, I firmly believe Collect's contributions here have been cutting through some of the crap and flotsam created by (albeit well-meaning) attempts to quantify aspects which are simply better left to common sense and the context of each individual situation involving an impediment to achieving consensus. Casting aspersions on Collect's edits by crying WITCH! about an editor who agrees with Collect's changes is axe-grinding. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 16:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. But I'll have a Cappucino instead, and retire from the Censensus argument. Dicklyon (talk) 18:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dicklyon, you wrote: a policy page is too important to expect other editors to just trust that your rewrite is a good thing. That's true, but why say that here? What has Collect said or done that cause you to believe Collect expects others to just trust that the rewrite is a good thing? Collect's change at issue here can be reviewed by any editor in two to three minutes. If something problematic is seen, it can be reverted and the problem explained.

What I see here is pure disruption: reverting without substantive objection/explanation, and then much more time and energy spent on making vague objections about process. This disruption appears to be based on the position that all non-trivial changes must be discussed first, and any non-trivial change not discussed first can and should be reverted without reading/evaluation/objection/explanation, and hours, days or even weeks can go by without the reverter offering anything substantive in objection to the change, rather than an honest and genuine reading and evaluation of the change, followed by a possible reversion and associated explanation if there is substantive objection. Reverting merely for lack of discussion or not establishing consensus first itself blatantly contradicts consensus as explained all over WP, including on this policy page at Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_editing,

If an edit is not an improvement, then it well should be reverted. Any such revert should have a clear edit summary stating why the particular edit is not considered to be an improvement to the article, or what policies or guidelines would require the edit be undone. Further discussion should then be undertaken on the article discussion page.

,
and at Wikipedia:RV#Explain_reverts:

It is particularly important to provide a valid and informative explanation when you perform a reversion. Try to disclose the link for the Wikipedia principle you believe justifies the reversion. Try to remain available for dialogue, especially in the hours and half-day or so after reverting.

A reversion is a complete rejection of the work of another editor and if the reversion is not adequately supported then the reverted editor may find it difficult to assume good faith. This is one of the most common causes of an edit war. A substantive explanation also promotes consensus by alerting the reverted editor to the problem with the original edit. The reverted editor may then be able to revise the edit to correct the perceived problem. The result will be an improved article, a more knowledgeable editor and greater harmony.

I'm a second set of eyes, and I see nothing significantly objectionable in the original edit. In my opinion "formal" is unneeded per the explanation above, but it's not a big deal whether it's in or not. The main thing is that the affected parts of the policy read much better after Collect's changes are applied.

Now, does anyone who has read this far - which should take more time and energy than reading and evaluating Collect's change - have any substantive objections to the change? --Born2cycle (talk) 17:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think everyone here has broken that rule, Vecrumba. And along with Collect's other misstatements about his contributions, now we can add a claim of clear consensus where none is present. His effort to work in harmony with the usual practices in this space are not much in evidence. I started a discussion of the second person question in deference to his concerns and I think it was immediately clear that opinions differ on these matters. --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:09, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Who or what is Vecrumba and what rule are you talking about? Since you've stated no substantive objection to the change in question, I will presume you have none. Making statements about the behavior of others is highly inappropriate here regardless of who says them or how much others have done so (need I remind you that two wrongs do not make a right?). --Born2cycle (talk) 17:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My objections are not difficult to understand, so which unappealing conclusion about your state of mind would you prefer we draw? I recognize that you have not been able to make a meaningful counterargument to my objection. Until that appears, my objection stands. --Ring Cinema (talk) 11:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Vecrumba is Peters' actual username. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have not been involved here before, nor am I interested in the back and forth in above. However, I take issue with Collect's edit that changed:

Try not to attract too many editors into a discussion. Fruitful discussions usually contain less than ten active participants; more than that strains the limits of effective communication on an online forum of this sort. Where large-scale consensus is needed then it should be sought out, otherwise the input of one or two independent editors will give far better results.

to:

Fruitful discussions usually do not generally contain too many participants. It is difficult to reach consensus with a large number of disparate views involved.

Whether or not the numbers were "pulled out of someone's ass" (as Born2cycle put it), they represent the consensus prior to Collect's edit and they provide useful guidance on arriving at consensus. Which is after all, a major purpose of this policy. Johnathlon (talk) 18:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amazingly enough - ascribing words to an editor which they did not write is not a good way of either gaining consensus nor of gaining the respect of an editor whom you falsely ascribe the words to. Cheers, and consider redacting false statements. Collect (talk) 22:23, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Honest mistake. My bad. A simple, "I didn't say that" would have sufficed :). And it was tangential to my statement. Johnathlon (talk) 08:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt this represents prior consensus, it was just something that someone wrote once and it's taken until now for anyone to notice it and object to it. There are just too many variables affecting the optimum number of editors. I don't much like the revised version either, though - "usually do not generally contain too many" is almost meaningless; and it's not the number of disparate views we're concerned about (the more alternative ways of looking at the problem, the better, probably). --Kotniski (talk) 18:48, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Hey! "Pulled out of someone's ass" was how I put it, not Collect! (credit where credit is due!). I disagree that "usually contain less than ten" is useful guidance, but I have no issue with it being in there. I don't think it changes the meaning at all. But something so minor, like the removal of "formal", is something that can be done while reaching consensus through editing via actual edits and edit summaries, which I suggest is far more productive than Reaching consensus through discussion in a situation like this. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to have the "less than ten" advice removed, because it depends. Five may be too many for a content dispute; ten may be too few for a site ban proposal.
I am unhappy that "too big a change" and "no written documentation of prior authorization" are being tossed about as excuses for reverting changes. It took me less than 60 seconds to review the changes to that section, and this policy in particular does not need to have an incredible level of stability. If you've got a problem with a specific bit of wording that was changed, then you should feel free to revert that specific bit, but it's really inappropriate to toss the baby out with the bathwater. For example: if you don't like "formal consensus", then remove the word "formal", but don't revert the grammatical changes (e.g., splitting a long sentence into two shorter sentences) at the same time. You are all experienced editors here: wholesale reversions because you don't like a fraction of the changes are for newbies and incompetents. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Noetica edit

Good one! [1]. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've reviewed all your other edits and am either supportive or neutral on all of them but one, this one, replacing:

Unless a discussion regarding a claim of "no consensus" is undertaken on the discussion page, an edit summary of "no consensus" or "not discussed" is not helpful.

with:

Unless a discussion regarding a claim of "no consensus" is undertaken on the discussion page, an edit summary of "no consensus" or "not discussed" is not helpful, except possibly on pages that describe long-standing Wikipedia policy.

I've reverted that accordingly, with edit summary: "no, it's not helpful to revert simply as 'not discussed' even on policy pages. Have a substantive objection or don't revert". Many people seem to think it's perfectly okay to revert other people's work without even reading and evaluating what they did, but that's the epitome of non-productive and disruptive activity. It's one thing if it's obviously vandalism, of course. But if you look at a change and don't see anything objectionable, a revert is just rude, at best.

I strongly object to the introduction of this text to the policy, which is itself a change in policy without consensus support. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:42, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Dreamguy (talk · contribs) reverted my restoration of the original wording [2] with edit summary: "My substantive response is that you do not have consensus to make a change to page defining consensus - which is kind of the point of the text)".
  • That makes no sense, as Noetica is the one who introduced the change (to which I, at least, object), so I reverted again[3] with edit summary: "I object to this addition to the policy, which is clearly contrary to policy. If the change changes policy, then id it as you rvt. See talk.)".
  • This was then reverted again by Noetica[4] with edit summary: "Undid (good faith?) revision by Born2cycle; please note: that qualification is simply taken from the linked essay; it is quite an important clarification, and it has a proper place here; not undiscussed!)"
  • Not undiscussed? Where has it been discussed? And if it has, there certainly has been no consensus for it, as it contradicts what the section itself is about. Why should there be an exception for policy pages on this point? Reverts like that on any page are simply disruptive. If you want to discuss the change, then you should have something to discuss, namely, a substantive objection to the change. So bring that up, and you can revert. But to revert without even having a substantive objection in mind? Again, that's just disruptive. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:53, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
B2C, it's just a qualification that is thought necessary in the very source that has just been linked (Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus"). It has stood unopposed since 11 November 2009. See this edit. All I did was correct the citation of that source, so that a crucial exception is not stripped away.
It is not to be censured as "undiscussed"; it has been there all this time!
NoeticaTea? 00:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Noetica, surely you understand that this is policy and that that is an essay, and when there is a distinction what the policy says trumps what the essay says. Sounds like we need to have a discussion to determine which is supported by consensus, but, in the mean time, the original wording of the policy page, on this disputed point, should be retained. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:59, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Policy trumps guidelines and essays, sure. Like rock trumping scissors. But there is no question of trumping here. The appeal to that pretty stable essay was made by Collect with this recent unilateral and hotly contested edit. Note the frankly deceptive edit summary: "(copy edit - change "legitimate" with its connotations to "proper" etc. , rm second person usage, "civility" blocks are currently under ArbCom discussion, and should not be here,)". Why should we take that as discussed, or consensual, or now to be defended? It even contravenes one of the less controversial pushes that it makes, calling for informative edit summaries! (Well, I have always supported that; in hard discussion over at WT:MOS.)
I say that unruly, portmanteau, tangle of an edit should be undone, except where there are merely innocuous changes of wording. In particular, it is ridiculous to appeal to its innovations to protect it from reversion!
But this theme is addressed in concerns expressed independently by Tony, below. Perhaps we should move to a single treatment of this nest of issues there.
NoeticaTea? 01:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm glad that we've agreed that policies, which have been adopted by the whole community, are more likely to reflect the community's desires than an essay, which was not. Given that, let me tell you what the actual, official, community-approved policy on making changes to policies says about this issue:

Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page. It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance.... Consequently, you should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there is no formal record indicating consensus for it: instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it, and open a discussion to identify the community's current views, if one hasn't already been started.

So the actual policy is that reverting a change to a policy on the grounds that the change was "undiscussed" is a bad idea. This page should not be recommending restrictions that the most applicable policy has directly and explicitly rejected. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well What, that is interesting for a number of reasons. Some points in response:

  1. Your citation of policy skips over about 300 words, and with a single ellipsis ("...") leaps from one named subsection to another. The way you have done this, the word "consequently" appears to link what comes before and after it. But it does not. Excerpts from the intervening text that you have omitted:

    However, because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure that they are not accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion.

    Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to policy. Changes may be made if there are no objections, or if discussion shows that there is consensus for the change. Minor edits to improve formatting, grammar, and clarity may be made at any time.

    Major changes should also be publicized to the community in general; announcements similar to the proposal process may be appropriate.

  2. As it happens, you are the author of half the text following that ellipsis: with this edit (entire edit summary: "Start a discussion"), without indication of which section or provision is affected. There was no discussion of the change.
  3. As it happens, you are the author of the whole text preceding that ellipsis: with this edit of 9 September 2011 (entire edit summary: "Merging redundant sections"), without indication of which sections or provisions are substantively affected. There was no discussion of the change.
  4. In citing your own undiscussed insertions into policy ("which have been adopted by the whole community, [and are] more likely to reflect the community's desires than an essay"), you appear to contrast it with the present page. But as things stand, this page is as much policy as the page you refer us to. This page addresses the matter of consensus – central to the working of the Project.
  5. You write: "So the actual policy is that reverting a change to a policy on the grounds that the change was 'undiscussed' is a bad idea." But it is not a question of a change merely being "undiscussed"; it is a question of changes for which there is no evidence of consensus, in a policy or guideline of Wikipedia. Such changes can be challenged; they have been challenged; they will be challenged. Then it can all be sorted out in discussion, as the policy that you cite requires, and "publicized to the community in general" to make sure that the community accepts it. It is certainly improper to insist that such undiscussed changes stand until proven non-consensual.

In sum, we need to take far more care to consult, to present our mooted changes on talkpages fairly, to give informative edit summaries (certainly not misleading ones), and to avoid the kind of incestuous tail-chasing that has a small band of enthusiasts writing what purports to be consensual policy, and then resisting reversion on spurious legalistic grounds – sometimes reinforced with threats, as we have seen recently. But as I say, this is a broader discussion; it needs community scrutiny in a section of its own. Below, or elsewhere.

NoeticaTea? 21:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Noetica, it would be more informative to say that I have been the most active editor at that policy during the last couple of years, the primary author of the last half of the entire policy page (the life cycle section began in one of my sandboxes and was eventually pasted to Wikipedia:Policy/Procedure before joining the policy, but it is not the only section I have drafted), and a major contributor to a good deal of the first half, not just most of these specific sentences. Anybody who can find the history page can discover this, and anybody who can read the talk page's archives will discover that these sections were discussed (repeatedly, in the case of the life cycle section) and the results clearly approved. So if anything, your statements above amount to "If any editor in the entire English Wikipedia knows what this section is actually supposed to communicate, it's WhatamIdoing."
"Undiscussed" and "no evidence of consensus" are synonymous. You get to revert the changes if (and only if) you want to challenge them, and you must challenge the changes on some basis other than the lack of prior written agreement to make the change.
This shouldn't be hard: either it's a change you personally believe improves the page (in which case, it would be unbelievably silly for you to remove it), or it's not a change that you personally support, in which cause you are (in my experience) a thoughtful and rational enough person to explain exactly how or why you think the new version is worse than the old version, without resorting to bureaucratic whingeing about "he didn't jump through the hoop marked 'discussion' before editing the page". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:44, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As a point that may help you understand the section: When I write a policy, the grammar is intentional. These examples should illustrate the differences:
  • "Talk page discussion typically precedes substantive changes to policy" is a declarative sentence that communicates nothing more than plain fact. It is not a recommendation for anyone to follow the typical pattern.
  • "Policies and guidelines can be edited like any other Wikipedia page" is a statement of permission: you are allowed to do this.
  • "You should not remove any change solely on the grounds that there is no formal record indicating consensus for it: instead, you should give a substantive reason for challenging it" is a direction on how you are (or are not) to behave under the relevant circumstances.
Unlike some less careful writers, if I'd actually meant "You must discuss substantive changes before making them", then I would have actually said that, in direct and unambiguous words that left no doubt in your mind about the necessity of prior discussion. The fact that it doesn't say this is because prior discussion is not actually required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your detailed reply, What. I would certainly prefer that the discussion proceed elsewhere; but if you insist, I will continue it here with you for now. On some points of yours:

[I]t would be more informative to say that I have been the most active editor at that policy during the last couple of years, the primary author of the last half of the entire policy page [...] and a major contributor to a good deal of the first half, not just most of these specific sentences.

If that is so, well done! I am more focused, though, on the particular parts that you cite above.

[...] your statements above amount to [...]

But no. You go on to say what you think, not what my statements amount to. This does not mean that I disagree: just that we are making different statements.

"Undiscussed" and "no evidence of consensus" are synonymous.

I disagree. But I prefer, once again, not to pursue that here. It is an issue connected with the provenance and fate of several recent edits at this policy page. See sections below, instead. If I have time, I might well have something to say there. I hope you will too.

You get to revert the changes if (and only if) you want to challenge them, and you must challenge the changes on some basis other than the lack of prior written agreement to make the change.

So you keep insisting. I find the wording "prior written agreement" strange and strained; but beyond that, though I have looked I do not find where consensus was developed for that idea, either here (where the surreptitious edit was and is hotly contested), nor for this text that you inserted in Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines just three months ago: "It is not strictly necessary to discuss changes or to obtain written documentation of a consensus in advance. However, because policies and guidelines are sensitive and complex, users should take care over any edits, to be sure they are faithfully reflecting the community's view and to be sure that they are not accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion." Please point to the discussion of what I have underlined, whether preceding the edit or accepting it afterwards. I point out again that in your edit summary ("Merging redundant sections") you did not signal to the community a small but substantive change. I must have missed the discussion, and how the change was recorded for easy retrieval in the history of the page. Please show me where all that is. Not that I strongly disagree! But I don't like to see any such policy text used (as it has been) to justify Collect's jumble of an edit covertly introducing controversial provisions on this policy page. To me that seems altogether perverse; and others agree.

Unlike some less careful writers, [...]

I am a careful writer too, and I certainly appreciate your conscientious attention to detail. What I am concerned about is the apparent lack of good signalling, so that the change could be verified as consensual.
For examples of my rather different approach, see these discussions:

Quotation marks guideline: adding a special case
[A completed case in which we discussed fully before even a minor change.]

"Proper nouns", "proper names", and other concerns: amending the lead
[A current case of considerable interest; please join in! I signalled very clearly what the intention was, and explicitly called for reversion if the change was suspected to be against consensus.]

NoeticaTea? 05:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need "the change [to] be verified as consensual" before the change is made. This is not a bureaucracy. If you dislike a given edit, then you should challenge the substance of that edit. But you should not be wasting your time and energy challenging the process that Collect chose to use. The process Collect chose to use is explicitly permitted. You will find that process described in approving terms at Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_editing as well as at POLICY.
I understand that you don't like the process Collect chose, and I understand that you are more accustomed to the anti-bold LOCALCONSENSUS at the main MOS page, but that is pretty much irrelevant. If you've got a problem with the substance of a change to this page, then please let us know, in as much detail as possible, what's wrong with it. I firmly believe that writing policy is much harder than the average editor realizes, and consequently that bold changes have a much higher risk for significant, unintentional problems than previously discussed ones. However, if your only problem is "Collect didn't say Mother, may I? before editing", then I have no sympathy for you: skipping the Mother, May I? step is permitted, even on policy pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is not so much a matter of the change being verified as consensual before it is made, as your selective quote of my text suggests. What I wrote is this (underlining now added):

"I am a careful writer too, and I certainly appreciate your conscientious attention to detail. What I am concerned about is the apparent lack of good signalling, so that the change could be verified as consensual."

It is a question of what turns up on people's watchlists, and in the history of the page when it is reviewed for changes of interest. It is irresponsible to leave an edit summary suggesting a mere "copyedit", where substance is actually changed. The controversial edit by Collect, which a few editors have objected to, was controversial not just in its content. It was also more sweeping than the edit summary suggested. That was inadequate as an indicator of the content, as some have noted. This is the feature I object to most. All too often changes are smuggled through without clear signalling, by design or by negligence. Now look at these excerpts from Wikipedia:Editing policy (with which you have been concerned):
  • When you edit an article, the more radical or controversial the change, the greater the need to explain it. Be sure to leave a comment about why you made the change. Try to use an appropriate edit summary. For larger or more significant changes, the edit summary may not give you enough space to fully explain the edit; in this case, you may leave a note on the article's talk page as well. Remember too that notes on the talk page are more visible, make misunderstandings less likely and encourage discussion rather than edit warring.
  • One person's improvement is another's desecration, and nobody likes to see their work "destroyed" without prior notice. If you choose to be very bold, take extra care to justify your changes in detail on the article talk page. This will make it less likely that editors will end up reverting the article back and forth between their preferred versions.
  • In general, more caution should be exercised in editing policies and guidelines than in editing articles. Minor edits to existing pages, such as formatting changes, grammatical improvement and uncontentious clarification, may be made by any editor at any time. However, changes that would alter the substance of policy or guidelines should normally be announced on the appropriate talk page first.
There is more; but I highlight a few policy provisions that are relevant to the present disagreement. Central to all of this is what I mention above: proper signalling. If you insist that this is not a proper concern for an editor to have, and that a lapse by itself is no warrant for reverting, I insist, and cite policy in support, that the original lack of warrant is more egregious and more likely to damage policy and guidelines. We could argue back and forth about that; but let's not. Let's just give adequate edit summaries, and mark changes on the talkpage (before, or at least after) when they might be thought substantive – as policy requires. Then none of the concerns Born2cycle raises above can arise. Nor can your own concerns.
♥ NoeticaTea? 23:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I think that edit summary was excellent signalling. It signals "I did not intend to make any substantive changes here, so if you see substantive changes, it was probably a mistake". If you've got objections to the substance of the changes, you should still be complaining about the actual substantive problems, but the signal seems perfectly fine to me.
Even tiny changes to some policy statements can have unexpectedly large effects, and most editors frankly do not have the skills or experience to get complex details right on the first try. If I were concerned about the precise language in this policy (and because of its subject matter, I'm generally not, although I am very much concerned about the details in other advice pages), then I'd be checking every change, no matter what the edit summary said. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Current discussion

I am removing this major change. It is tendentious editing; it tended to reinforce Noetica's position in a current dispute, even now before ArbCom. No; "no consenus" remains a weak reason on policy pages; what is stronger there is "I disagree, because..." JCScaliger (talk) 03:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I note that, ironically, this edit defeats itself. Its inclusion on this policy page does not have the wide consensus it demands. If it were sound policy, its addition would be forbidden. JCScaliger (talk) 03:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted your edit, JCScaliger. It might be seen as tendentious and disingenuous to make that edit while simultaneously you raise the issue in a partisan manner in current ArbCom deliberations (see your edit there), without also noting at that ArbCom page that you have provocatively edited like this here.
I have added this inline message on the page, next to a discussion template: <!-- As noted on the talkpage, this section has been raised in current action at ArbCom. It should not be subject to substantive edits until discussion there is concluded. -->
I will shortly be raising the matter at WP:ANI, with a request to have this policy page protected.
NoeticaTea? 04:19, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Then they'll be protecting the wrong version.
Noetica, even if there really is no consensus for a change, whether on a policy page or not, merely reverting it with the two words "no consensus" is not helpful. The correct course of action is to revert anti-consensus changes with a useful explanation, not to revert the changes with a vague or uninformative explanation. We need the person making the change to understand how and why the change is a problem, not merely that someone didn't like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
W, no one has edited with those two words. Please do not insinuate that anyone has. I will not discuss the matter here any more. I will discuss it at WP:ANI, if you would like to take it there. Please consider also raising the matter in the relevant ArbCom case, or by application to an ArbCom clerk or one of the three drafting arbitrators for the case. There is no question of "right" or "wrong" versions right now (as you should know, about page protections); there is a question of stability in policy, and due process while matters are being dealt with at ArbCom.
I will answer no more comments on this procedural matter at this talkpage.
NoeticaTea? 04:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You've misunderstood my substantive remarks: You want this policy to assert that "possibly on pages that describe long-standing Wikipedia policy", it's actually helpful to revert changes with a non-explanation like "not discussed" or "no consensus". That's what the sentence you put into this policy actually says: It's unhelpful to use a lousy, uninformative edit summary like "no consensus"—unless it's on a policy page, and then the person you're reverting with that worthless edit summary will magically be helped if you use that edit summary.
It is my firm belief that editors do not become mind readers even if they are editing "pages that describe long-standing Wikipedia policy", and that "no consensus" is therefore still an uninformative and unhelpful edit summary on policy pages, just like it's uninformative and unhelpful on any other page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And just in case it wasn't clear: the sentence uses the word h-e-l-p-f-u-l, not the word p-e-r-m-i-t-t-e-d. If you've got a newbie who changes a policy to say that sexual images are never permitted because children read Wikipedia, the "no consensus" is not an explanation that will help the newbie understand anything. An explanation like "Wikipedia is not censored or written just for children" is far more helpful in explaining the problem with the edit. This statement is about what's helpful. "No consensus" is not normally a helpful edit summary, even on policy pages. You are permitted to use unhelpful edit summaries, but we are not going to pretend that unhelpful edit summaries are magically become helpful when deployed on policy pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:56, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well put. JCScaliger (talk) 23:18, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As at 2 December 2009, the project page stood at 13,895 bytes. As at 2 February 2012, the project page stands at 23,565 bytes. The combined diff of the change to project page since 2 December 2009 shows that, despite the addition of almost 10,000 bytes, the substantial thrust of the policy page has remained almost rock-solid. This is a tribute to the good faith efforts of many editors, and a vindication of the method of consensus to maintain, with slow improvements only, such policy pages.

The current page seems to suffer to some degree with word-bloat; on the other hand, the setting out of the topics covered is more comprehensive.

There is no need at all for the recent minor edit-warring; clearly our policy pages are more robust than that. The short protection to the page should allow editors to step back and take a longer perspective. NewbyG ( talk) 00:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note the peak was over 26K, and my emendations reduced the size, albeit not as greatly as would likely be beneficial. Most of the added verbiage was due to including material from other pages, however. Collect (talk) 00:12, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We're once again back to Noetica claiming that "no consensus" is a helpful edit summary, which is just nonsense.
We're also straying a bit towards anti-BOLD language, which has two problems:
  • The recent edits are all in the context of policy edits that have been perceived as gaming the system, whereas 99% of our consensus-through-editing work happens on article pages, and
  • BOLD editing of policy pages is explicitly permitted, and "no consensus" reversions directly discouraged, by WP:POLICY. It would be unfortunate if people trying to game the ARBCOM case screwed up this page so much that it ended up contradict the main page on how to change policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Substantive changes to policy made, ironically, without consensus

Surface changes are fine, but significant changes appear to have been introduced without prior discussion and consensus on the talk page. I suggest that we go back to whatever the relatively stable version was and proceed from there on the talk page. There's just a slight hint that one or two parties are changing the policy to suit themselves. I may be wrong. Tony (talk) 23:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to participate (and calling for a revert is participating) please read and evaluate the changes yourself before suggesting a revert on such dubious grounds. I've been doing that and have had no trouble whatsoever. Do you think something was missed? These really are mostly copyedit changes, and we should not have to start trying to reach consensus through discussion (which we are to resort to only "When agreement cannot be reached through editing alone") unless the far for more preferable and productive reaching consensus through editing fails.

Reverting merely for lack of discussion or not establishing consensus first itself blatantly contradicts consensus as explained all over WP, including on this policy page at Wikipedia:Consensus#Reaching_consensus_through_editing,

If an edit is not an improvement, then it well should be reverted. Any such revert should have a clear edit summary stating why the particular edit is not considered to be an improvement to the article, or what policies or guidelines would require the edit be undone. Further discussion should then be undertaken on the article discussion page.

,
and at Wikipedia:RV#Explain_reverts:

It is particularly important to provide a valid and informative explanation when you perform a reversion. Try to disclose the link for the Wikipedia principle you believe justifies the reversion. Try to remain available for dialogue, especially in the hours and half-day or so after reverting.

A reversion is a complete rejection of the work of another editor and if the reversion is not adequately supported then the reverted editor may find it difficult to assume good faith. This is one of the most common causes of an edit war. A substantive explanation also promotes consensus by alerting the reverted editor to the problem with the original edit. The reverted editor may then be able to revise the edit to correct the perceived problem. The result will be an improved article, a more knowledgeable editor and greater harmony.

If you establish lack of consensus, and after you try to reach consensus through editing, and that fails, then bring it to the talk page. Doing so any sooner is just disruptive. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why don't we "go back to whatever the relatively stable version was and proceed from there"? I have two reasons why this is a bad idea:
  1. The one version that we know, for certain, no longer enjoys wholesale consensus is the "relatively stable version" that used to be on this page. If it enjoyed consensus, we wouldn't have so many people complaining about it here or trying to fix it on the policy page.
  2. Reverting all of this work means tossing out all of the work done so far and starting over. If we've made some improvements, we should keep them. The wiki process is supposed to keep the good and toss only the bad. "I can't be bothered to figure out these changes, so we should just start over from scratch" is not how collaborative editing works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
B2C appears to be exerting "ownership" over this page. I notice his most recent edit-summary contains "I object". It's an odd thing to say in an edit to policy on consensus. I agree with Noetica's recent revert. Tony (talk) 00:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What's wrong with saying "I object"??? "I object" is how one establishes that there is no consensus for the change in question, in this case a change that Noetica introduced. Anyone can do that, as long as the substantive reason for the objection is also provided, which I did in both edit summaries and in the section above this one. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So you agree that Collect was in error when he said there was a "clear consensus" for his "copyedit"? --Ring Cinema (talk) 01:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Did he actually claim it had consensus? After Ring Cinema, Dicklyon, SmokeyJoe, and Will Beback objected to is as too big and complicated to understand? That would be fun to see. He seems to be going to other way, saying that we have not established a lack of consensus, which is perhaps even more amusing in its twistedness. Dicklyon (talk) 04:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
He said there was a clear consensus for his "copyedit". --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see now where he said "At this point, I count only you and Dick as being "many editors" here, whilst, I, Kotniski, Carol, B2C, SmokeyJoe, Brews, WAID, Jayjg, et al are now of no account?" How he counts Kotniski, Carol, Brews, Smokeyjoe, WAID, or Jayjg as supporting his edit is unclear to me; did I miss or misinterpret some support from some of them? Then he told me "two editors saying 'nay' do not negate a clear consensus, Dick." which I agree is typically true, though it's inapplicable here. Dicklyon (talk) 18:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I fear you missed [5] from SJ and the simple fact that the others either explicityly agreed with the consensus I stated, or edited without altering my edit. Cheers - but we have now moved well past the cavils and I thought it quite unfair to SJ to have you assert he opposes my edit. Collect (talk) 21:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The relatively stable version was the one on which I made this edit on Jan. 4; the edit was to apply a portion of Collect's big edit, basically the part described in his edit summary, but keeping the paragraphs lined up, so we could review that part before doing more. B2C gave me the thumb for it. Before anyone had a chance to react, Brews ohare, my other old nemesis, came out of left field to add another second-person advice paragraph. Since it was undiscussed and opposite to what we were working on (getting rid of second-person), I reverted it; he hasn't come back. But then Collect started off in a new direction. Still nobody has discussed this first part of his edits; it's OK by me if we want to accept it and move on from there. The next stable version (for 29 minutes) is the one that Collect changed 4 paragraphs of in this diff. We should go back to that if we're not sure we like what Collect did, and analyze his diff, and tune that up. I found two things I didn't like in the first two paragraphs (which is as far as I got), and said so in my edit summary; B2C agreed on the first one, and didn't understand the second, but put it all back anyway, saying my objection was not "substantive". So I reverted it again, and then Collect put it back. By then I had 3 reverts on Jan 4 (one of Brews, two of the Collect/B2C thing) so had to back off. Then Collect did 3 more in a row, including this one. I think it's safe to say that his edits do not have consensus, since they've been widely objected to and never motivated by any discussion. Now there are 20 more edits today, so it will be difficult indeed to see what had been changed, with what implications. I personally find this kind of rapid-fire modification of policy page scary and inappropriate (since Collect started this on Dec. 30, 48 policy page edits and about 135 talk edits). Anyone else? Dicklyon (talk) 04:27, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Yes, and it is a policy page: although I believe it should be a style guide, the fact that it's currently policy is reason enough to talk things through here rather than boldly changing it in controversial ways. Tony (talk) 04:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Much of what's on the page is not really policy, it's just waffle, often departing from the topic. If anyone's interested, I'm vaguely working on a version of this page that could reasonably be described as policy - see User:Kotniski/CON (the first few sections, down to where it says PREVIOUS DRAFT). I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but I think it's the direction we should be going in - get the policy down to the essentials, and leave the advice on various loosely-connected matters to the appropriate guidelines.--Kotniski (talk) 12:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Since it's telling editors how they should behave, rather than what the final product should look like, it would be a behavioral guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not in favor of a major rewrite, Kotniski, even though I find your instincts sound on how the policy should be manifested. My reason is that so many editors rely on this page when they are trying to figure out how to proceed and it is important that we avoid undermining their good faith reliance on it. There is nothing here so egregiously misguided that it can't be addressed on the margin. True, some material seems out of bounds to me, but apparently at one time there were editors who decided it should go in. Perhaps they had a good reason for that. Although personally I think the scope of this page could for good reason be restricted to simply the issue of consensus and its discontents, we go beyond that, and maybe it is striking the right balance. --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Too many participants"

I've never been happy with this bit. WP's canvassing policy most adequately deals with the matter of stacking, among other issues. This too many participants clause seems to go further, really cutting across the import of the canvassing policy, by asserting that discussions should be kept small (how small? how large? who knows?). Does it mean that the diversity of opinions should be restricted by having small, short discussions in out-of-the-way corners of the project and launching into grand changes on that basis? It certainly could be taken that way, as an implied licence for a small group of editors—or even a single editor—to "own" a page.

My view is that the too many cooks bit is gratuitous and in conflict with the canvassing policy, which concerns more properly the way in which editors are attracted into a debate, not their participation itself. This is a critical distinction. The clause should be removed, in my view, with a link to the canvassing policy quite sufficient. Tony (talk) 01:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree -- hence the removal of "10" as a "magic number". The current ArbCom case on Civility, however, seems to set rather an upper bound, with around a hundred different editors furnishing comments <g> Note also the recent published study showing that very few articles ever get more than 30 total editors at all (I think it was mentioned in the Signpost as well). Collect (talk) 01:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, too. Why not just remove this section? Dicklyon (talk) 01:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed; it can hardly be said to be part of our policy concerning consensus.--Kotniski (talk) 12:15, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Kotniski, a valiant attempt to improve it, but as you said in your edit summary, probably needs to go. Tony (talk) 15:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's valuable advice. I've personally left discussions because it eventually occurred to me that my contribution to the volume (no matter how brilliant you all believe my every word is ;-) was impeding resolution. I'd leave the general concept (without any magic numbers, since the ideal size for a team depends on the team's goals) in this page, at least until a better method of educating editors about this reality-based phenomenon appears. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think editors would be better educated (in general) if we did a lot of wholesale tidying-up of a whole lot of policies and guidelines and other pages we kind of encourage people to read about the ways of Wikipedia. The way it is at the moment, the meaning of much of it is unclear, its division between pages (and the way those pages are labelled) is pretty random, and so the chances of anyone who might benefit from this piece of advice actually stumbling on it here (before they simply work it out for themselves, as you report that you did) are minuscule. The problem we always seem to encounter, though, is resistance from people who think of these pages like lawyers think about laws - not as information being presented to an audience, but commandments that might be "used" or "misused". We ought at least to aim to split off the actual genuine policy (of which there really isn't very much) from the vaguer norms and the good advice.--Kotniski (talk) 20:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favor of tidying up. But it can't be "wholesale", as many people have an interest in watching to make sure that the policy doesn't get written in a way that will become a problem down the road. It would be better to do incremental cleanups (including removals of whole paragraphs of advice when editors are OK with that). Dicklyon (talk) 23:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The policy page should be shorter. People complain that editors just don't take any notice when they're bloated, as this one certainly is. Tony (talk) 01:36, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and even people at Board level have identified the complexity and incomprehensibility of "policy" as one of the things that put people off contributing to Wikipedia. To Dick: when I say "wholesale", I do mean incremental (not that we just wake up one day and find everything's changed), but without timidity as to the eventual number (and sometimes size) of the increments. We ought to at least have some kind of intelligent plan, or some overall scheme to aim at - suppose we really wanted to convey information to people about how Wikipedia functions, how would we organize that information in such a way as to ensure people can find what they need without wasting time, and how can we write it in such a way that people who don't know it already can readily understand it and aren't put off by it?--Kotniski (talk) 11:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a very admirable goal. I don't think the consensus page has much of a role to play in putting people off contributing. Most new editors just edit, and until there is a need, they ignore policy. And that's a very fine feature of the site. I would prefer that we inflate our importance in a different way. --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:28, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(od) Consensus is central, as consensus is even required on what is even considered to be a reliable source in the first place. There is too much of a focus on consensus relating to content (representation of sources) and not enough focus on sources in the first place (misappropriating "consensus" to censor or to inappropriately include sources, any one editor disagreeing "voiding" consensus as a means to own content or "allowed" sources, etc.) PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 15:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is:
  1. even prior to "Achieving consensus" we should consider an "Applying consensus" section
  2. the diagram need to be explicit, separately, on sources (input) and content (output)
There is more about the 101 ways of dispute resolution (FAR FAR TO MANY)—for example, in my experience I find the "Village pump" to be little more than flypaper for editors fluttering about for a soapbox to opine from—than there is about how consensus really works. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 16:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The ability of the WMF board and developers to override community consensus

Blueboar has just edited the Beyond consensus section of this policy, thus drawing our attention to it:

Before:

After:

Now, I'm sorry to rattle the crockery, but this wording—both before and after the recent change—needs major examination; some of it is simply untenable. Naturally, we are all bound by Foundation policies, but the text here seem to go way beyond this without reason or basis in logic, practicality, law, or convention. Such an important part of en.WP policy should be worded carefully. Let's look at a few of the holes:

  1. Jimmy has no special rights on en.WP beyond his role as a point of appeal WRT ArbCom decisions (see WP:AC); that much the community affirmed in the referendum last year revamping the ArbCom policy. His "ceremonial" appointment of new arbitrators is not based on the ArbCom policy, which is now expressed in the passive ("will be appointed"), and continues only at the pleasure of community consensus. Despite talk of Jimmy's putative reserve powers, they are neither properly defined nor rooted in any credible source. They can be sourced only in consensus by the en.WP community, or by fiat of the WMF board, only insofar as the board might act within WMF policies. Last time I looked, I saw neither such consensus nor such fiat, but that Jimmy is simply a member of the WMF board.
  2. The text here, worryingly, says "some declarations from Jimbo Wales". Clearly the meaning is not all declarations—just some. Some is a meaningless subset unless this class of declarations that can override community consensus is defined.
  3. Until Blueboar's edit a a few hours ago, the some applied not only to declarations by Wales, but to the WMF board and WMF-employed developers. Now, all declarations of the board and the developers can override consensus, but only some declarations by Jimmy. Neither some nor all for any of these three entities works logically, practically, or in terms of the legalities.
  4. Since Blueboar's edit, "all" is pitted against a subset, particularly: this is not logical. All is all, not some things in particular. Until the recent edit, particularly was pitted against some, although whether some referred to the same subset of declarations as those listed under particularly was unclear.
  5. Whereas the text says "See also Wikimedia Foundation Policies", it doesn't explicitly relate these policies to the power of the board or the developers to override community consensus. This needs to be explicit. No one would agree that the board or the developers can instruct us to perform illegal acts, indulge in plagiarism, breach privacy, licencing, CoI, or non-discrimination policy, for example. It's probably most unlikely that the board would do this, but I can imagine cases where a developer might slip up; in any case, the ability of board and developers to override en.WP consensus needs to be explicitly constrained to Foundation policy, rather than having the link to the policy sit there unconnected as a "see also". Otherwise, why is the policy mentioned at all?
  6. I'm struggling to know why the developers (and it should be piped explicitly to WMF-employed developers) are given the same ambit as the board; the same classes of particular declarations are ascribed to both board and developers ("copyright, legal issues, or server load"), and it's odd to think of developers having legal or even copyright expertise—that belongs to the board and its legal delegates, not to developers. Do we believe a developer's dictum that something is not legal, or breaches or does not breach copyright? And taking this policy at face value, a WMF developer can override consensus on our civility policy. Why? Is it not possible to constrain the developers' power to override community consensus to technical matters ("server load", sure)?
  7. Just a language quibble: declarations by, not declarations from.

It's time to get this policy right; whether before or after Blueboar's edit, it's a joke that does have slight potential to blow up in our faces one day.

Tony (talk) 06:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem? Are you saying that editors should not respect what the Developers say about server load? Or are you saying the paragraph should be three times longer to make it clear that only certain statements from the developers are respected? It is unlikely that much benefit would arise from a bureaucratic specification of exactly which statements must be respected. While it irritates some to see a suggestion that Jimbo is somehow different (What have the Romans has Jimbo ever done for us?), the fact is that we have no idea of whether he would or could make a statement that "must be respected by editors". Nevertheless, it's pretty reasonable to assume that he might summon sufficient resources to impose a view. It is clear that the WMF could impose their views although they seem to focus on fluff. A policy might say that Jimbo/WMF/Developers are not respected (or whatever), but those would be hollow words with no effect. Johnuniq (talk) 06:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have endeavoured to make the section both more succinct and more accurate. Collect (talk) 14:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Collect, much improved, but it needed to cross-refer to both the Foundation board's and ArbCom's own scope and constraints. I've endeavoured to write these in succinctly, using piped links. Tony (talk) 14:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I find Jimbo et al. stay away from the most contentious problems as long as there is no imminent legal threat to the WMF. Legal requirements must be observed—is there really any need to muddle "consensus" with "respect" for anything? If something causes a server load (or other technology infrastructure) issue, that should simply be dealt with on its own.
   IMHO, Jimbo's "consensus = people working together" refers to collaboration, not consensus. There is a difference. Editor "A" and editor "B" are under no obligation or need to form a consensus in order to work together. We need less touchy-feely and more nitty-gritty in addressing guidelines and policy. The more ultimately vapid (goodness, respect, et al.) statements we add to either, the more Wikipedia becomes a caricature of itself divorced from its own realities. (Apoloiges, WSOB, wrong side of bed, syndrome this morning). PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 14:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've attempted to make the section less wishy-washy. IMHO, respect is irrelevant. Policy is the way things work, it is not a etiquette manual. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 16:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Etiquette matters, because practices are at least as important as rules; every way of doing things can't be written down. There is a form to the work of editors but it is one they provide according to their own designs, so the bedrock here is not a policy or rule but the behavior of the crowd. In that light, community consensus seems to me overvalued, since, with respect to the editors on this page, we are a self-selected group just as much as any other page editors. If we collectively overstep our ambit or, more likely, present advice that can be interpreted badly or well, only local consensus corrects us. Wikipedia's strength is in just this collective self-correction. Policy is genuinely of limited utility and that is a good thing. --Ring Cinema (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was not implying etiquette does not matter, only that it is not within the ambit, as you say, of policy. I do completely agree that manners matter. Too often I have seen "just let them be, they are just blowing off steam...", "leave well enough alone" (for the rightly offended party to go calm themselves) be the words of wisdom to live by from admins and ArbCom. Individuals attacking others off-Wiki are allowed to prostrate themselves before ArbCom and ask for forgiveness. Policy should be crisp, clear, and succinct. Proper etiquette should be enforced vigorously. The current instantiation of "tolerate free speech" = "tolerate insults" is a cancer to be summarily excised, IMHO. (Not to mention we have far too many sophomoric essays which have taken on cult status, such as Please be a giant dick, so we can ban you.) PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:11, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. We are either a (truly) fraternal organization or a frat house. We can't be both. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
P.P.S. That said, I shall have to write an essay on the belligerent usage of policy to control content, which I have decided to name "acronymonious" behavior. (!) PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am unaware of the cultic eminations, I guess. I think what I'm trying to say is that the policy that says that it has to be followed doesn't know its own limits. A policy here is advice on the right form, and etiquette is the same. For what it's worth... --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well... I think that Blueboar's change was fine, and I think that the current version has some problems. But I also think that it would make more sense to take this up after the next Board meeting, because the rules are changing. Those who haven't been following the development of the revised Terms of Use should look at meta:Terms of use#11._Resolutions_and_Project_Policies, which addresses this issue.
Basically, if the Board declares that the English Wikipedia (or "editors", or "the community", or "projects", or anything else that sounds like you) is going to do something, then we-the-editors have a choice between complying or quitting.
NB that the only reason that "all" Board policies aren't mandatory is because some of the resolutions are explicitly phrased as suggestions, and some of them are completely irrelevant (like the policy on employee travel expenses). But when (to name a current example that has a couple of editors in a panic over community autonomy) they declare that editors should take the principle of least astonishment into account, we don't have a choice: compliance is mandatory.
The only change I would have made to Blueboar's version is to add the word relevant, as in "all relevant declarations from the Board". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is "relevant" relevant? There is no purpose to specifically calling out that WMF policy which applies to WP is relevant to WP. It is by its very existence and definition. Where this policy (or any other) is concerned, wordsmithing => less is more. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing, and yes, if there's policy at some point which we find to be a personal anathema, we can leave WP. There is no conflict, no conundrum, no Gordian knot here. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

even by those who had disagreed...

In "Consensus can change" we read "Decisions reached through consensus should be respected, even by those who had disagreed." This is perhaps somewhat off the mark if consensus is not majority rule. Those who disagree supposedly have their dissent heard, and everyone tries to accommodate those views. So if consensus is reached, there shouldn't, at that time, be disagreement. If someone else would like to tackle that one, okay. I am thinking on it and will edit there when I think of something that satisfies me. Are there other views? --Ring Cinema (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nope - the point is that consensus != unanimity - and thus there will still be those who disagree. Simple and clear? Collect (talk) 23:43, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't agree that's the way to state it. Unanimity is the ideal. Dissenting views are included. Simple enough? --Ring Cinema (talk) 00:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
IPOF, "dissenting views are included" is not always true of consensus. In fact, it is quite rarely true. Cheers. Collect (talk) 07:18, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's one of the parts that needs to be binned as gratuitious and of utterly no use to the community. This page should be shorter rather than longer. Tony (talk) 08:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Which part do you mean? (I agree with Collect about the original point though - unanimity is often not achieved, and there will therefore often be people who disagree with the decision reached - and if the decision was "no consensus" and whatever (in)action follows from that, then there will certainly be people who disagree - nonetheless those people are expected to abide by the decision - this is pretty much the whole point of this page, and ought to be given much greater prominence IMO, since if editing "against consensus" were not to be regarded as a Bad Thing, then the whole purpose of the consensus policy would be negated.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are making the point that we are, indeed, missing an introductory section "Achieving consensus." We launch right into policy about consensus and discuss the conflict resolution and the "output" portion without sufficient discussion of the "input", including how to write about things in a manner that good faith consensus can be achieved. We also need to honest about WP not being some encyclopedic utopia, and to separately deal with how to deal with good-faith disagreements and how to deal with disagreements (taken to be) in bad faith. Policy needs to be geared to actual circumstances; Collect is correct, there are, in fact, very active editors who espouse editorial views which are supported in no reputable account of topics in dispute and which will (ultimately) never be included in article consensus.
   We also need to deal head-on with the sticky situations which result in entrenched editors running off fresh contributors via abuse or intimidation (or, as I call it, acronymonious behavior). Let's be realistic: every editor is going to wish to promote their editorial view, hopefully it is well-sourced where basic facts are also not in dispute; the downside is that WP policy OMITS factual accuracy as a gate for content inclusion, so WP:CONSENSUS needs to deal with that aspect as well. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 15:27, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see several bids for majority rule here. For those who feel that dissenters needn't be accommodated, perhaps they can spell out the difference between their idea of consensus and majority rule. We might be thinking of different cases, so perhaps we have a hard case / easy case problem here. Hard cases involve binaries, where there is literally no middle ground; easy cases involve the more common decisions that editors manage through discussion. I was thinking about the easy cases, and I am still quite sure that the ideal of consensus is unanimity. If we write this page in a way that makes it easy to ignore dissenters, consensus will be impoverished if not meaningless. --Ring Cinema (talk) 01:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, if we write it in a way that makes it easy for dissenters to ignore the majority, then consensus again becomes meaningless (since our decisions would no longer result from the consensus process, but from a tactical edit-warring process). We need to cover both sides of the coin - it's not majority rule, but it's not the law of the jungle or the liberum veto either.--Kotniski (talk) 07:16, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Decisions reached through consensus should be respected by everyone who participated in its formation." I don't think this comes with the full force required. If a decision was reached through some reasonably full process (i.e. not just by one person claiming that his edit has stood for x weeks and is therefore "decided" by WP:SILENCE), then everyone needs to respect it, regardless of whether they participated. You can't just stay out of a discussion, watch the community come to a decision, and then say "I wasn't part of it so I'm not bound by it". That, as I think we can easily see, would be disruptive to the whole process.--Kotniski (talk) 07:21, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can, however, explain how the previous group of participants were mistaken. WP:SILENCE is trumped by speaking up. If something is wrong, you don't have to respect it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, well, I don't mean "respect" as in "sit quietly and say nothing" (like we are supposed to respect people's religious beliefs); perhaps "abide by" would be a better choice of words. You can still try to persuade people that they've got it wrong (up to a point where continual harping on the same point becomes disruptive in itself), but it's disruptive to edit against the decision. (E.g. if consensus is to delete an article, then don't recreate an almost identical article - get a review of the decision first.) If people weren't expected to abide by consensus decisions, then this whole policy would be just empty words.--Kotniski (talk) 10:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to recap: I think the issue is not that folks who did not assent in the first place to the consensus must consent to it, but more that once the article is in "calm mode" that seeking to keep arguing the case is not productive to improving the article, that it is generally wiser to either move to another article, or find other issues which would improve the article at hand. Picking at sores does not generally help them heal. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to be conflating two issues here: one is whether it's appropriate to raise again for discussion a matter that's already been settled (to which I would generally answer yes, with provisos - that's the "consensus can change" principle); the second is whether it is appropriate to edit so as to thwart the result of the settlement (to which I would generally answer no, with provisos).--Kotniski (talk) 16:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with all of the above. Kotniski's objection is very well taken, but I ignored that consideration on the theory that remaining silent for the purpose of objecting after a consensus is reached would constitute bad faith. And, in fact, it is perverse behavior, since one must eventually make one's case. On the other hand, my draft eliminates the idea that a single editor can arrive at a consensus or that an editor on holiday is out of luck. So, on balance, perhaps this is okay as is. Where Collect's summary is concerned, there is some ambiguity in his words, but I think it is probably not legitimate to claim that an article/edit is "settled" as a form of denying a new editor the chance to offer an improvement. Kotniski's second objection finds less favor with me: objections should be accommodated; that is the policy. Claiming a consensus despite continued good faith objection is not consensus-seeking. Therefore, it is not possible to make a change (ignoring the binaries) without obtaining some form of assent from dissenters. That assent might take the form of agreeing to put the matter to a binding straw poll, but since that is not consensus everyone is clear that only the participants can be so bound. Thanks. --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You now seem to be saying that nothing can be done until everyone agrees (or something like that). As we've long established, that doesn't work. Sometimes we say we have "consensus" even though we don't have universal acceptance. Not every objection can or should be accommodated. And those whose objections are not accommodated must live with it. Whether or not their objections were made during the decision-making process or are brought to the table sometime later. I'm not saying you can't raise objections after the fact, but then it should be talk first, action later. --Kotniski (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a principled explanation of which objections do not have to be accommodated. In the absence of that -- which is really quite basic, Kotniski, for your post to make sense -- I have no problem saying that real consensus means everyone agrees. What else is it if not that? A super-majority is not a consensus. It does no good to say you want consensus only for people who agree with the smart people in the majority. True consensus is ideally unanimity where different views are ironed out through some form of compromise. Of course that is difficult, but that is how it goes here. When dissenters agree that the majority should be allowed their way, that is consensus, too. As I've mentioned in the past, if majoritarianism is unavoidable, its most palatable form is acceptance of a majority proposal by a majority of the minority. I mean, that's my opinion. --Ring Cinema (talk) 19:50, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You still seem to have a different view of what "consensus" ought to mean than that that actually operates on Wikipedia. Super-majority situations are called consensus here. Sorry, but it wouldn't work otherwise. --Kotniski (talk) 19:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not in the policy and it is, unfortunately, incoherent to say that we operate under consensus except when we use majority rule. (And, again, let me stipulate that I am not talking about binary choices.) I realize that it is difficult to explain which objections can be ignored or under what circumstances, but it must be done. My idea on the majority of the minority is a principled explanation of the circumstances that could allow it. There could be others. However, we got here with consensus, so the practice functions fairly well already. According to the policy, all legitimate concerns should be accommodated, and that includes dissenters. To say that we follow consensus when we actually employ some undefined version of supermajoritarianism is not honest. --Ring Cinema (talk) 20:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It amounts to the same thing. In Ring's system, any viewpoint that isn't being accommodated is simply defined as "not legitimate" and then ignored. In Kotniski's system, the small minority's viewpoint might be legitimate, but it isn't being accommodated anyway because the super-majority doesn't choose to. The end result is the same thing: the small minority's viewpoint is not accommodated, and the super-majority claims to have a consensus not to accommodate it.
Ring, I think it's important for this page to address consensus in ways that apply to binary choices. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:12, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn't amount to the same thing. All legitimate viewpoints must be accommodated. The circumstance that allows them to be ignored should be stated or, as has been the case, left to the editors to work out. Not majority rule. Consensus. 2) I agree that we cover binary choices, but we label them and explain the difference. --Ring Cinema (talk) 03:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying now. It's not the case that all legitimate viewpoints must be accommodated (as you seem to acknowledge yourself, in the next sentence, when you say that there are circumstances that allow them to be ignored). And I'm not sure there's a substantial difference between "binary" choices and other choices. With non-binary choices there's more potential for seeking a middle-ground solution, but we aren't obliged to adopt such a solution; and such possibilities may also exist in the case of apparently binary choices (e.g. in a deletion discussion, the result may be to merge the article into another), but again there is no obligation.--Kotniski (talk) 09:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ring, how do we know what is a "legitimate" viewpoint? As nearly as I can tell, a viewpoint is legitimate if the supermajority chooses to accommodate it, and it is not legitimate if the supermajority does not choose to accommodate it.
So I had a case a few years ago in which a guy wanted a particular idea about how posture affects human health to be "accommodated". Was his viewpoint "legitimate"? He certainly thought so (and gave several reasons why he thought so), but the supermajority did not think so (and gave several reasons why we thought so). We don't have a system for declaring someone to be an omniscient being who can rule on whether his position was Truly™ legitimate; all we really know is that, in the end, the supermajority did not choose to accommodate his viewpoint, and that we declared our refusal to accommodate his viewpoint to be "consensus". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't introduce the term 'legitimate' for this context or decide that consensus is Wikipedia's decision procedure. It is simply the standard and the policy. We are, actually, obligated to try to incorporate dissenting views; that is the essence of consensus. A poorly-framed supermajoritianism is a slippery slope to majority rule if dissenters don't have to be accommodated. If we want to design a backstop to outliers and cranks, a supermajority rule is worse than recognizing the majority of the minority because the latter requires the majority to craft a proposal that meets with some dissenter acceptance. In this way, I implicitly define legitimate views as those held by a majority of the dissenters. --Ring Cinema (talk) 21:44, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Kotniski. I think you're conflating how it should work ideally with out it works in reality. Take this discussion as an example and you're the only dissenter about this point. We'll hear you out, to a point, but if we don't convince you and you don't convince us, at some point we, the super-majority, will declare that the super-majority is the consensus and you'll be expected to respect that. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:08, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for eloquently making my point. You are advocating majority rule. In consensus decision-making, my views should be accommodated. That is the policy. To the extent you want to ignore them is the extent to which you want to ignore the actual policy. And in fact, I happen to have the only proposal that offers a formal solution to the paradox of consensus. That you would think it is fine to ignore the only solution before us only shows a lack of understanding of how consensus works in practice. I'm not obstructing, I'm offering arguments that are not rebutted. Thanks again. --Ring Cinema (talk) 01:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Although you say you're talking about how "consensus works in practice", you offer no evidence that this is how it works in practice on Wikipedia. This is how you think it should work. This is how you believe it can work. This is the only way it can legitimately be called "consensus", in your view. I get all that. What you are refusing to accept is that, "Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity" (that's what the policy says; it does not say that all views should be accommodated). And thank you for providing a great example of why it must be this way. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You misstate the policy. To "incorporate all legitimate views" I take as longhand for "accommodate all views". So, my only evidence is the text of the page on consensus. And, as it happens, my proposal offers a formal method to realize the contradictory goals of accommodating all views but determining which are not legitimate while requiring the majority to offer something to the minority when unanimity is not possible. That is something supermajoritarianism doesn't do. --Ring Cinema (talk) 02:40, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I misstate nothing; you do. It does say "Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity" (verbatim), and it does not say "incorporate all legitimate views". It says "involves an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns". Again, this is a good example. An effort is involved here to incorporate your concerns, but since they're contrary to what policy says and what is done in practice, their legitimacy, and therefore the need to incorporate them, is in question. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ring, I still think you're misunderstanding something or else trying to pretend that some ideal is always achievable in practice; but you mention your "proposal" - what proposal would that be (I've kind of lost track)? If it's still the idea that people who didn't take part in the decision-making process don't have to abide by the decision, once properly made, then I think that's clearly wrong (it would go against the fundamental principle that what we call "consensus" is the way we make decisions, and not just a talking shop which leaves the actual decisions to the edit-warriors and the (pseudo)random admin page protectors). Though I think this issue deserves a separate section, to deal with the subtleties.--Kotniski (talk) 08:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Kotniski, I concur on your edit throwing out my try on the first sentence of "Consensus can change." It's a better paragraph without it and I was not completely comfortable with it myself. You will note that I didn't just jump in and change it. I asked for opinions and stated my intention to change it.
But to the substance: No, I am not misunderstanding consensus. I believe you don't appreciate how often unanimity is possible when it is insisted that people try to get it and how easy it would be for the page on consensus to lead people to ignore other views. When editors say to each other, "I don't agree with you but how about we do this?" there is a lot of ground covered. So I am accounting for theory and practice. We want to find unanimity where it is possible, we need here to recognize that the process of trying to find unanimity is the essence of consensus, and we can improve on the page the principles that allow ignoring anyone's views. My proposal is that we pay attention to the majority of the minority; their assent is meaningful. But of course there are problems with any approach so it requires careful consideration. At least it is a principle that requires the majority to offer something to the minority. --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We are, actually, obligated to try to incorporate dissenting views; that is the essence of consensus.

Actually, Ring, that's my point: we are not "obligated to try to incorporate dissenting views". We are actually obligated to (politely) tell WP:Randy in Boise to take a hike. We are obligated to omit tiny-minority views altogether. We are obligated to omit any and all views that can't be supported by suitable reliable sources.

"All legitimate views" is not a longwinded way of saying "all views". We don't have to accommodate all dissenters. We don't even have to accommodate a "majority of dissenters". NPOV requires us to care about a "viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors". That means that the prevlance of a viewpoint among dissenters is explicitly rejected as a factor that can be considered in determining the consensus for an article's content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bravo! Never saw WP:Randy in Boise before. Excellent. I've added this to my favorite quotes section on my page, here: User:Born2cycle#Consensus. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
1. We are not obligated to make an effort to incorporate dissenting views as long as we don't follow the policy. Dissenting views are legitimate, so it's clear that there is a choice: follow the policy or incorporate dissenting views. That is how consensus works and what distinguishes it from majority rule. 2. Of course legitimate views are different from all views as soon as there is an omniscient editor (see WhatAmIDoing above). Since we don't have that, only consensus can determine the difference, and that gets us nowhere in the context of a decision about which views can be ignored. I'm sorry, it's not up to the majority to decide when a consensus is not needed, since that is majority rule. So for those reasons I've offered my proposal. It suggests a principled way of managing these difficulties. No one else has made such a proposal, but if there is a better one I would be interested in it. --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus here clearly does not seem to accept your assertions. Collect (talk) 14:10, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just repeating the policy, so it's hard to know what you mean. --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You seem not to appreciate the meaning of "make an effort..." You can try to find a solution that satisfies everyone, but sometimes it proves impossible, and you have to be satisfied with one that satisfies "most" people (for a value of "most" that we don't define exactly). So the policy certainly doesn't say or mean that all dissenting views must end up being incorporated; and after discussion has run a resonable course, there is a kind of majority rule (otherwise we would end up with minority rule, with single dissenters able to block any change, which would be even worse).--Kotniski (talk) 14:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just a quick correction: "Legitimate" is the wrong word to use... Wikipedia does not base inclusion on the legitimacy of a viewpoint... it bases inclusion on the significance of the viewpoint. We are required to include all significant viewpoints (even those we personally consider illegitimate), but may exclude viewpoints we deem (by consensus) to be insignificant. Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Are you not possibly mixing the viewpoints of editors with the viewpoints found in sources? When we are talking about the viewpoints of editors on a particular question, I think "legitimate" is closer to what we mean than "significant" - if 100 people want Justin Bieber's article to say that he's the greatest singer of all time "because he is", that's likely to be significant, but someone assessing consensus would (hopefully) conclude that those people's views are illegitimate.--Kotniski (talk) 16:37, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah... now I understand what you are saying. Yes, I did misunderstand what you were talking about. Blueboar (talk) 16:52, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Kotniski, but my understanding is not lacking. All views should be incorporated; that is consensus. I see that you increasingly endorse majority rule, and I mentioned a few days ago that your views are majoritarian in character. Now you've stated it. However, on Wikipedia, we don't operate by majority rule, we make our decisions based on consensus. Majoritarian views belong in a different forum. My sense is that you want to take examples of outliers and cranks and generalize that problem to anyone with a minority view. That's not consensus, and I think you have sort of admitted it above.
So there is the problem of how to manage situations where consensus is hard to come by. It is possible to discuss which views are legitimate, but, as has been pointed out, there is no omniscient agent to settle that matter. That is why I have mentioned several times that legitimacy needs to be settled according to some principle, and, let me add, it is even better if there is a procedure or process that requires compliance with the principle. It is always possible to leave it to the editors, but, if we can do better and remain consonant with the principles of consensus, it would be a good thing. --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ring, suppose I am of the view that President Obama is a reptilian alien from Mars. Suppose I feel strongly that this important and vital information should be included in the bio article on Obama (and half a dozen related articles). Are you saying that my view must be incorporated? Or would you agree that other editors can come to consensus that my view is utter nonsense, and exclude it? Blueboar (talk) 19:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Perhaps it would work to ask for a citation to support this crank viewpoint.) --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:17, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or maybe a completely legitimate view will be excluded by your "consensus of the smart people"? I'm sure you realize that any power given to the majority that allows them to ignore the minority will be instantly abused. Your example isn't of a legitimate minority view so it seems simple. But to conflate minority views with outliers and cranks is an attempt to justify majority rule. The fact that there are sometimes cranks on Wikipedia is not a reason to abandon consensus-seeking. The larger problem is getting editors to reach for unanimity, and if we can we should make a path to it. My proposal at least motivates the majority to offer something to the minority to gain their support. --Ring Cinema (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be clear, I will agree that there should be something to handle cranks if you will agree that it should be different from the treatment for minority views. --Ring Cinema (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And there is something... it is a Wikipedia policy known as Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. The point is, we can exclude material based on consensus... however, that consensus should be based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not our own personal opinions. Blueboar (talk) 00:11, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, not necessarily only on written policies and guidelines, but at least on a proper awareness of what Wikipedia is trying to be and what its principles are - on genuine arguments, in other words.--Kotniski (talk) 10:55, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so now two candidates are offered as reasons excluding views: views with a point and arguments that are not genuine. The latter gets us no further than "legitimate", right? "Genuine" is in the eye of the beholder in a completely congruent way. Both the minority and the cranks believe they have a genuine argument. I agree, of course, arguments that are not genuine (assuming we can cash that out) must be fake or bogus or ersatz, but it's no progress because we still lack the omniscience that WhatAmIDoing mentioned above. Next to the former: can we invoke a policy to exclude a viewpoint? Yes, we can, I agree. But, sadly, someone has to decide, and there will be disagreements about it. I have noticed that we lack an omniscient agent to decide for us. So, these two tries are both correct and both bound to fail in some cases. Now, I'm unclear if my respected fellow editors made their comments with the awareness that they were not offering a justification to abandon consensus when there is disagreement or if they were aware that these are merely excellent reasons that editors will use to persuade others to accept their own assessments. --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:17, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying now... But in the absence of an "omniscient agent", we have (supposedly neutral) admins to decide for us (in those cases where we are really unable to decide for ourselves whether consensus has been reached). And then we respect their decision (or challenge it, but we don't just reject it and edit against it - at least, we shouldn't, since that would thwart the whole process and render this policy useless).--Kotniski (talk) 20:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You were offering 'genuine' as a criterion for 'legitimate', so I pointed out that it gets us nowhere, Kotniski. Not sure about this latest, since a consensus isn't about what an admin decides. Don't expect me to agree that admins can competently decide something important. I might not be able to stop laughing. --Ring Cinema (talk) 13:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they don't always get it right. But who would you have decide? Or would you leave everything to the edit-warriors to fight things out?--Kotniski (talk) 14:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Who I would have decide are the editors, but I know you agree. I am thinking about how we can bring different views into alignment. An admin can't say what consensus is; that's a job for an expert. Light bulb. --Ring Cinema (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't admins (or other "uninvolved editors in good standing") the closest thing we've got to experts, when it comes to matters of deciding Wikipedia "consensus"? (I sometimes disagree with their assessments, but I don't have any better suggestion as to who we can get to do it - of course it's preferable if the involved editors themselves do it, as I guess in most cases they do, but sometimes that turns out not to be possible and we need an outside judge).--Kotniski (talk) 17:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly you are correct. It's like Zuckerberg deciding what is good privacy; at best, he doesn't know what he doesn't know. --Ring Cinema (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ring, I think we might be having a semantic problem here. You define consensus as all editors' views about what's best for an article being accommodated. That's an acceptable dictionary definition as far as I'm concerned.

On the English Wikipedia, this is not what happens: The views of all editors are not always accommodated, and we don't actually feel much obligation to do so. On the English Wikipedia, what's done to an article is what most (not all) editors believe is best for the article—after discussion, with whatever level of compromise seems appropriate to those participating, and with the determination of which view counts as the "most" view being determined by some uninvolved editor if necessary—even if this means that there are people who completely disagree and whose views are not accommodated in the least.

We have traditionally called this process of listening to everyone and doing what most people want consensus, just like we call labeling Time cube as being pseudoscience is what we call neutral rather than judgmental, although the latter term is probably more accurate according to the dictionary.

Do you agree that (1) this is what actually happens and (2) that most editors call what actually happens consensus? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'm well aware of Wikipedia practices. The most prevalent among them is the alacrity with which editors take sides. I'm sure that no one thinks consensus means majority rule, that everywhere it means accommodating as many views as possible, and Wikipedia is no different. Clearly there are many methods used by editors to get things done when unanimity is not possible. Sometimes the minority backs down, sometimes they agree to abide by a straw poll, sometimes compromises are accepted. That's all great. Sure, there is a measurable gap between policy and practice; that is a good thing and makes it possible for superior solutions to bubble up. It would be disastrous to hint that majority rule is okay, because that would short circuit the give and take. Instead, we should use our best efforts to find ways to bring editors together. Today I made contact with an experienced expert in conflict resolution in my area and we are considering that there might be untapped resources and methods available in the literature. --Ring Cinema (talk) 00:36, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So in your opinion, this kind of practice is actually done, and is actually called consensus, but you don't want WP:Consensus to admit these facts? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Legitimate

I think that we need to kill this "incorporate all legitimate concerns" idea. Here we have an editor asserting that the SOPA-related blackout was anti-consensus because it did not "incorporate all legitimate concerns". The fact is that we call that kind of decision consensual on Wikipedia, even if it completely ignores the legitimate concerns of a sizeable minority of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:40, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So what if someone wants to say that? Let's agree then that the first legitimate view we ignore will be yours. I expect your support. --Ring Cinema (talk) 06:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We only say we "try to" incorporate all legitimate concerns. In some cases it turns out to be simply impossible to actually achieve that - almost every action has upsides and downsides, and there isn't necessarily a satisfactory compromise available. We can't have a blackout and not have a blackout (and even if there were a middle path, we wouldn't be obliged to choose it).--Kotniski (talk) 08:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But we have already agreed that pure binaries are different, so again this is just a non sequitur. Please enunciate the principled conditions under which a legitimate viewpoint should be ignored in a way that is not majority rule. "It's too hard" is not a reason. We don't have a problem that we are trying to solve; we have a method that functions well in practice. (Are you okay if we ignore your legitimate viewpoint first? If so, proceed.) --Ring Cinema (talk) 13:47, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The "method that functions well in practice" in effect includes a certain amount of majority rule, because if we waited for universal agreement we would sometimes wait forever. I don't have an exact algorithm for how these things are decided (sometimes different admins will reach different conclusions from the same set of facts). But no-one has a veto, even if his arguments are sound - there might be even sounder arguments (or at least, arguments that convince more editors) for doing the thing he opposes. I really can't think of any better alternative to the kind of qualified majority rule (following good faith discussion) that we effectively use at the moment - can you?--Kotniski (talk) 13:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We don't use majority rule because that's not consensus. Perhaps it is true that you don't think that the majority should be required to accommodate minority views, but that is how it works. I'd like to advise you to become an expert in finding common ground instead of trying to avoid the requirements of consensus. (Again: you agree that we can ignore your legitimate arguments? If so, proceed.) --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The majority should be required to make a reasonable attempt to accommodate minority views (give reasonable consideration to them), but they won't always succeed in doing so to the minority's satisfaction. Just like everyone else, I frquently find myself on the "losing" side of an argument, even though I still believe I'm right - in that case you just give way gracefully, you don't scream and shout and insist that your view "must" be accommodated.--Kotniski (talk) 15:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(So you are okay if we ignore your legitimate views? I'm not clear on that.) There has to be cognizance here that a paradox lies at the heart of consensus. It is not unanimity and it is not majority rule. It is something else. You say that you don't scream and shout and insist, but I notice that you try to circumvent your collaborators when it's time to discuss and compromise. That leads me to believe that you don't really get the idea of consensus completely. The sentiment that the majority only owes the minority some "reasonable consideration" is simply majority rule rewritten. Presumably they already have, right? So that's not consensus. --Ring Cinema (talk) 18:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm OK if my legitimate views end up not being taken into account in the final decision, if there's no realistic way of doing so while also accommodating the legitimate views of a larger number. If you like, then yes, we have a kind of majority rule. I don't insist on calling it "consensus" - that's just other people's habit. But I don't see how it's realistic to expect to compel the majority to take account of a minority in some way. You can compel them to listen and engage for a while, but in the end, if you can't convince people, you have to accept it and move on. So do I, so does everyone (except the drama queens, who unfortunately are given far too much legitimacy around here - one of the reasons I'm taking a (hopefully long) break from Wikipedia pretty soon).--Kotniski (talk) 22:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The SOPA discussion wasn't a pure binary. There were many different proposals. For example, when I wandered past the page at one point, there seemed to be significant support for a banner that explained the problems but could be clicked through to make all content available to the reader. A complete shutdown was only one of many options.
And, yes, I fully expect that my legitimate views will be ignored or rejected on occasion. In fact, I could easily point you at specific discussions in which that has happened. I am not always on the "winning" or "consensus" side of every dispute. When my "legitimate view" is rejected, I don't go whingeing about that the decisions are anti-consensus and therefore in violation of fundamental policies. Instead, I accept that there is a valid consensus not to incorporate my "legitimate view", because I have learned a bit about WP:How to lose. (Perhaps you have a different approach.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:57, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, you make a good point. Obviously legitimate views will not be included in all cases. There is some ground between unanimity and majority rule and this page should point people toward unanimity in the hopes they will find that ground. If the process requires editors to compromise, then we're golden. If the process tells the majority it's up to them, we will destroy consensus. --Ring Cinema (talk) 17:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And about that whole "can change" bit

This is really poorly stated. What happens is that as more editors participate, as more reliable sources are added, as those sources are more accurately represented, as content includes dissenting views in the same proportions as found in (real) scholarship, "consensus" will achieve stability. If there is an earth-shattering event which turns everything we know about a particular topic upside down, "consensus" will include that and achieve a new point of stability. "Consensus can change" is merely an invitation to attempt to destabilize consensus. For our purposes here, of policy, "consensus" is a PROCESS not a result. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 15:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I entirely know what you mean. What "consensus can change" is normally taken to mean, in my experience, is that just because a consensus decision has been made in the past, it doesn't mean that we won't reach a different consensus decision now. The reason might be something that happened in the outside world, but more likely it's just that the editors who are considering the matter now have different views/priorities/approaches/experiences/intelligence than those who considered it then.--Kotniski (talk) 16:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My point (I hope) is that the statement that "consensus can change" implies it can always take a right or left turn or go completely in reverse. That can happen, perhaps, when arguing over politics, but not when creating well-researched, well-written, objective encyclopedic articles—unless there has been some sea-change in scholarship on whatever the topic is. We should focus on the process by which consensus zeros in on a result; any "change" is en route to an end point, it's not that the end point itself has changed or the article radically altered. That's why I think the current policy is somewhat deficient in its realistic characterization (e.g, diagram) of consensus. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 19:09, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I think you're looking at this from a different altitude, as it were.
When we say that "consensus can change", we're not saying that the overall information presented in an article like WWII is likely to change significantly. That would indeed require a sea change in the scholarship.
Instead, we're looking at much smaller bits and pieces: we may have decided in 2009 that this one book shouldn't be cited in the article, and in 2012, we may decide that it's acceptable. We may have decided once that the best title for an article was ____, and now we decide that it's some other title. We may have decided once that a single article about Condoms was best, but now we decide to split it into Condom and History of condoms. We may have once decided that minority POVs should be limited to a small section in an article, but now we decide to expand our description of those views. We may have once decided to keep an article at AFD, but now we decide to merge it away.
Sometimes these changes are made because different people are involved. Sometimes they are made because we are aware of new sources.
And sometimes they are made simply because our overall approach has been refined. For example, an external link that qualified for inclusion under the 2005 version of that guideline might well fail under the 2012 version of that guideline. Several years ago, we said that it was acceptable to place ref tags before punctuation, and now (last I checked) we recommend that ref tags always be placed after terminal punctuation. Half a dozen years ago, a page was declared a guideline merely by a single editor slapping a template on it. Now, we have a recommended, multi-step process that we normally expect people to follow. When Wikipedia got started, creating a BLP without any sources at all was acceptable; now we regularly delete them. Back in the day, official guidance recommended against including any citations at all in list articles; now we generally encourage them. All of those are examples of the community's consensus changing on some point, and none of those changes have any relationship to the scholarship on the topic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here is a more concrete example. For several years there were rumors that Micheal Jackson had a involvement with the Music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Originally, the consensus was not to include anything about it since the only coverage came from unreliable sources. Eventually, more reliable sources surfaced a new consensus was formed to include the Micheal Jackson info. This change did not mean that there was a major change in scholarship but simply a case of better sourcing being found after the initial consensus against inclusion.--70.24.206.51 (talk) 23:02, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well in that case I suppose the reliable sources are the metaphorical equivalent of "scholarship". But another thing could have happened: in the past editors had reached a consensus that certain sources were unreliable, while in the present editors reached a new consensus that exactly the same sources were in fact reliable after all (or vice versa). This is more what I understand the "consensus can change" principle to be referring to - it's not wrong to reconsider an issue on which consensus has been reached in the past.--Kotniski (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Another way that consensus can change: Say an article had three contributors working on it a year ago, and all three agreed that some bit of information was really too trivial to mention in the article. No problem, that was the consensus at that time. Let's say these editors move on to other things, and six months later the article had other editors working on it. This different set of editors decides that the bit of information isn't too trivial and should be mentioned. No problem... consensus can change, and a new consensus was formed. Now, lets say that today yet another group of editors are working on the article, and they decide that the bit of information is in fact too trivial... Again, no problem... we have a new consensus. So... out it goes... unless at some point in the future the consensus changes yet again. Blueboar (talk) 04:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interestingly, the WP:CCC "concensus can change" bit that was later merged here is the main reason that this page is tagged {{policy}}. Not that by "concensus", we can only realitically mean "apparent consensus". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • What we need to note is that while "consensus can change" it is not prudent to seek to alter a consensus less than a week after one has been arrived at. Yet I have seen that done a number of times - including one day after an AfD was closed as "keep" one of the "losing side" posted that the article should be deleted anyways on the article talk page <g>. And has repeatedly started such sections since. All that does is create a "battleground" which is directly contrary to the principles laid out here. Perhaps we should, instead of mucking about with the CCC language, simply append

@Blueboar, precisely. I would completely change the sense of the section about "Consensus can change", e.g.,

Consensus should coalesce
Consensus is a process whereby an objective viewpoint is ultimately articulated once sufficient input and discussion have been provided as basis. It is generally counterproductive to repeat prior arguments again in the absence of significant changes in circumstances; to needlessly repeat recent discussions ("shouting louder") tends to be seen as disruptive. Invoking "consensus" to bolster one's personal position or to censor content, contending "according to consensus" or "violates consensus", is not a substitute for discussing the merits of new input to the consensus process.

PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:37, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I'm not sure it's necessary to state the obvious, that any sea-change in circumstances can change consensus. The current section title might as well be titled "Consensus can change, or, you're invited to attempt to change consensus any time you don't like it." PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:43, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care for the title and suspect that efforts to remove "CCC" will be opposed by the community. The first sentence is inapplicable to anything except articles. The rest of it seems okay to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Consensus can change section was stand-alone policy from 2 September 2005. Any attempt to remove it supports its continuation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:39, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ha... I like that! Nice paradox. Blueboar (talk) 02:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

edit reversed as "disruptive"

[6] has the edit summary

it's wrong because it's disruptive, otherwise it's not wrong -- and it is useful to appeal to practicalities when giving advice

How say ye others? Cheers. Collect (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm really not too bothered - both versions are attempting to say the same (rather vague) thing. I'd rather spell this out in a new section.--Kotniski (talk) 06:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, the section title implies to me that you may have misunderstood Ring's edit summary; I don't think he meant that your change was disruptive; I assume "it" was referring to the behaviour described in the sentence being edited.--Kotniski (talk) 07:28, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see -- well one well ought not to make edit summaries so readily misunderstood when reverting an entire edit, I would suggest. Collect (talk) 13:37, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You could learn to bring your ideas here first or you could not learn that. --Ring Cinema (talk) 13:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Inasmuch as I proposed the exact language here first, I fear your admonition is remarkably ill-aimed. Collect (talk) 13:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was unaware of that proposal, so my apologies. --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See my more radical, directly above. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 17:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I really do think consensus is better served by describing it consistently as an "arrival" at something without a section worded in a manner which implies the train can just as well leave the station as soon as it arrives. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 02:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If an edit is not an improvement, then it should be reverted. So simple??

The second sentence of the second paragraph of the subsection "Reaching consensus through editing" reads:

"If an edit is not an improvement, then it should be reverted"

This sentence is kinda poor. The gist of editing advice here should not be encourage reverting. What if the next person considered that the revert is not an improvement? To encourage reverting is not a good way to encourage Reaching consensus through editing.

If possible, “edit further” is preferred above “revert”. A good faith edit is an attempt to improve on some problem. If the edit fails to achieve, or creates a worse unintended consequence, or is just poor, then simply reverting ignores the fact that at least one editor thinks there is a problem needing improvement. Before reverting, editos should consider possible solutions that involve editing the edit.

"If an edit is not an improvement, then edit further to fix the previously perceived problem. If no further editing be discovered that improves on the previous version, then revert to that version." I think this is better, but is longer. What do others think? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Improvement should be favoured over reverting where possible. Also, there seems to be a little too much repitition in these sections, thus the project page is possibly too long, and not as clear and helpful as it might be. NewbyG ( talk) 10:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's nice to see you back here Newbyguesses, it seems a long time. Yes, there is a lot of repetition, or meandering, or bloat. I think Kotniski thinks similarly. I like your and collect's edits. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think the edit after mine was an improvement. Not sure that the subsequent edit (partial revert) is an improvement though.
It seems too wordy, and the intermediate edit seems clearer and quite correct. I cannot agree that these tweaks constitute a substantial change to policy, nor see why any injunction would be contemplated. This is a wiki, and collaboration is the norm we aspire to, it's all we can do, isn't it? I may edit further to remove some repitition, (or maybe not), but I have no intention to substantially modify the policy page, and will continue to follow the discussion on this page, as I have been doing. NewbyG ( talk) 12:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Reiterating, I have no intention whatsoever to substantially modify the policy page. NewbyG ( talk) 06:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, Noetica's change is both edit warring (second revert in less than eight hours) and opposed by multiple editors for being nonsense (although most of them have been kinder in their choice of words). An edit summary of "no consensus" is never helpful to the person whose edit is being reverted. It may be acceptable, and it is often efficient for the person doing the reverting, but it is never helpful, and providing helpful edit summaries is the sole subject of that sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gaming the ArbCom case

Noetica, Dicklyon, and JCSalinger (and possibly others) are involved in an ArbCom case about article titles. There are several proposed motions at here and here that would stop some or all of them (depending on the motion) from editing this page until the case is closed, and therefore from editing this page to make it appear to suit their side. (For example, a ban on editing this page would stop Noetica from insisting that "no consensus" is a helpful edit summary until the case was closed, but it would permit SmokeyJoe and Newby to continue with their improvement efforts.) If any of you have an opinion, then I believe you can comment in the "comments from others" sections. I'll be thinking about which, if any of the proposals I might support. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is right to draw attention on this talk page to a current Arbcom case, I am sure that is in no way canvassing. I have no intention of going there, nor wish to draw conclusions about editors there or elsewhere or from on this page for the time being.
But drawing other page disputes, content disputes in articles, or such to this talk page, or the project page doesn’t usually work out well. Or too much talk is wasted. Just look in the Archives archives, or read the top of the page. Oh, well. The 'sole urpose of this page is to discuss Wikipedia:Consensus. NewbyG ( talk) 05:49, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If none of the people in the ArbCom case had been editing this policy, supposedly to support their position in the ArbCom case, then the page wouldn't currently be protected over their edit warring, and we could be getting useful work done here. In effect, whether these people should be temporarily page-banned is a discussion about how—or whether it will even be possible at all—to improve this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the purpose of our policy pages is to aid the writing of articles. Not, in the first instance, to aid the writing of policy pages. NewbyG ( talk) 06:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this talkpage has been missing a header for some time. I've added <!- talkheader|search=yes|WT:CON ->. And as has happened from time to time, judging by some unfortunate section headings above, soon to be archived, editors old and new deserve to be reminded from time to time of some of the guidelines, for courtesy. Cheers, NewbyG ( talk) 09:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Trim up to the disputed sentence

Currently, the project page is protected. The top 100 or so words (up to the disputed sentence) could be shortened as follows, for clarity, without any change in meaning:

Consensus refers to the primary way decisions are made on Wikipedia, and it is accepted as the best method to achieve our goals. This page describes how consensus is understood on Wikipedia, how to determine whether it has been achieved (and how to proceed if it has not), and certain exceptions to the principle that all decisions are made by consensus.

1 Achieving consensus

Editors usually reach consensus as a natural product of editing. After someone makes a change or addition to a page, others who read it can choose either to leave the page as it is or to change it. When editors do not reach agreement by editing, discussion on the associated talk pages continues the process toward consensus. Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity (which, although an ideal result, is not always achievable); nor is it the result of a vote. This means that decision-making involves an effort to incorporate all editors' proper concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's norms.

1.1 Reaching consensus through editing

Further information: Wikipedia:Editing policy, Wikipedia:Be bold, and Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle

Consensus is a normal and usually implicit and invisible process across Wikipedia. Any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus. Should that edit later be revised by another editor without dispute, it can be assumed that a new consensus has been reached. In this way the encyclopedia is gradually added to and improved over time. An edit which is not clearly an improvement may often be improved by rewording. If rewording does not salvage the edit, then it should be reverted.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Would that be clearer? NB -This is a proposal for serious discussion only, and not an edit-request, thanks. (smileyface) NewbyG ( talk) 08:36, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Or perhaps for the lede:
Consensus' is the primary and preferred manner in which decisions are made on Wikipedia, and is considered the best method to achieve our goals. "Consensus" on Wikipedia does not mean "unaninimity" (as that is not always achievable); nor is it a vote either. It means that the decision-making process includes an active effort to incorporate editors' legitimate concerns, while following our policies and guidelines.
The issues discussed here include:
What consensus is understood to mean on Wikipedia
How to determine when it has been achieved
How to proceed when consensus has not been achieved
When consensus is not valid for a decision (including specific exceptions stated by policy)
Collect (talk) 11:40, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that seems better, just for starters. Fine with that, thanks. NewbyG ( talk) 12:44, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, I think that we spend too much time trying to craft an ideal lede, but I kind of like Collect's idea of having a bulleted list of what this policy covers. The other, minor tweaks in the wording seem unimportant to me: make them, don't make them, it doesn't matter to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The lede is fine already. Let's drop it. --Ring Cinema (talk) 14:00, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can say you are consistent after looking at your edit history on WP:CONSENSUS - but your opinion thatit is "fine" is insufficient to shortcircuit the process of WP:CONSENSUS here. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My opinions are well-founded and -defended. You? Hmmm. Your history comes to mind, as well, of erroneously claiming that you weren't altering the policy when you were, so a dose of skepticism is warranted. I'm not sure you know what you're doing. The lede already says what it should say better than your draft. Let's try to improve the project. --Ring Cinema (talk) 15:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
STOP... you are entitled to disagree, but don't make it personal. Blueboar (talk) 15:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note. Sounds good. --Ring Cinema (talk) 18:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whereas I see no significant difference between the existing and the proposed versions (maybe, Collect will explain us), I like the new version better. I have one comment though. In the Collect's version, there is no difference between guidelines and the policy. In actuality, we must observe our core content policy and we should stick with our guidelines. To emphasise this difference, I propose:
"..., while observing our policies and sticking with the guidelines."
--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(od) Then properly following Wikipedia policies and guidelines should work - since policies state that they are policies, and guidelines state that they are guidelines, I do not think anyone would try to parse further, do you? The main change is seeking clarity for the confused reader - I regard clarity as a worthwhile goal. Collect (talk) 22:13, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is currently unclear? --Ring Cinema (talk) 23:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently a significant number of other editors see the difference. I can not make you see the difference. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:40, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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