User:Isaacl/Consensus requires patience

Wikipedia comprises a global community, where discussions can take place over extended periods of time, due to the time-delay effects of online communication and the different time zones of the participants. Patience is required to effectively allow the consensus view of the community to be determined.

Challenges for collaborative, online decision-making

Large group decision-making is challenging on multiple fronts:

A small number of voices can dominate conversation, drowning out others.
Circular arguments, repetition of the same points, and irrelevant information, including overly-emotional appeals and personal criticisms, cause people to lose attention.
Agreeing upon appropriate criteria to bring the discussion to a conclusion can be difficult.

Unmoderated online communities face additional challenges:

Participants can write unduly long responses that in a face-to-face conversation would be controlled through appropriate interruptions.
At any given time, immediate responses are only possible by those in neighbouring time zones. This reduces the efficacy of dialogue.

One additional problem with a volunteer community is that, by its nature, the voices heard are only a small, self-selected sampling of the entire community. Even amongst those who are aware of the conversation and are motivated to participate initially, there is a large percentage who do not have sufficient interest to maintain engagement throughout the entire discussion.

Consensus takes time to develop

Under the best of circumstances, it takes time to build a genuine consensus in a group. Given the challenges of large group conversations where responses are time-delayed, sporadic, and non-representative of the entire community, it is vital to allow for enough time to hear all points of view and to digest them thoroughly. Through the passage of time, the impact of the clustering of responses from each time zone, and the effects of overly-redundant posts can be reduced.

Unfortunately, this requires a longer attention span from participants. For better or worse, there is no way to avoid this when those involved in the discussion are from around the world.

Techniques to keep discussion going

If interest in a thread is waning, you can start a new section and recap the discussion to date, with a summary of the options discussed and their benefits and drawbacks, in an even-handed manner. Ideally, you should invigorate threads about which you are relatively uninvolved.

If the interested participants seem amenable, when starting the discussion, you can try to obtain an agreement for moderation. Select a neutral moderator to trim responses to reduce repetition.

Create an ongoing summary / frequently asked questions (FAQ) list of the common discussion points, so participants can easily become up-to-date on the state of the conversation at any point. If anyone starts to repeat a previously stated argument, point them to the summary/FAQ, and ask if there are any new points they wish to raise.

Co-operation is necessary

In order for a group to reach a decision, co-operation is needed from everyone: they must be seeking an approach that can satisfy as many persons as possible, or, from the opposite perspective, dissatisfy as few persons as possible. This means recognizing when a set of options are gaining greater favour over others, and allowing discussion to progress by further refining these options, rather than reintroducing previous options or seeking out new possibilities. Typically there will be opportunities to try new solutions in the future, so don't let your desire to try something else get in the way of doing something now.

Help out others with issues of strong interest to them but of lesser importance to you, by playing a neutral role in striving to keep the corresponding discussion focused, active, and progressing forward. However, given the reality that it is often difficult to find an uninvolved person to take on this role, be understanding if someone who has an interest in the discussion's outcome helps with these responsibilities.

Resolving problems takes time

By definition, difficult problems take time to resolve. One commonly-used framework for problem solving has numerous steps, including identifying a specific problem to resolve, working out a target for improvement, proposing solutions, choosing one or more solutions to implement, and repeating as needed. These steps can be made as lightweight as desirable: for example, although it is best to have a rigourous method to monitor a problem, often a simple qualitative measure can be good enough.

It is human nature, though, to look for quick solutions. To address this, a multi-phase approach can be adopted:

In the analysis phase, break down the big problem into smaller ones.
Take some of the easily addressable ones, particularly if they have high value, and investigate potential solutions.
Try out some solutions and realize their benefits.
Continue to work on longer-term solutions.

By getting some "quick wins", momentum is built towards implementing larger proposals.

A small victory that makes a small advance is better than being stalemated on trying to make a large advance all at once. In a consensus-driven environment, trying to achieve improvements through gradual evolution works better than trying to make a big, discontinuous change.

Resolving incidents takes focus and patience

For an incident between editors to be resolved, it is necessary to understand the various dimensions of the problem. This is more than just who said what to whom and when, or what back-history the editors in question have: it also includes an understanding of what has been done in the past to try to resolve these types of problems, including the various noticeboards and procedures for using them.

If you are seeking to comment on how an incident can be resolved:

Please be prepared to investigate the situation in detail. The discussion can easily be diverted down too many branches when contributors make statements based on inaccurate information, and lengthy corrections and adjustments have to be made.
Please have patience to allow participants to offer their evidence and view points, and for everyone to consider the relative weight and appropriateness of the presented information. Most situations do not need a rapid reaction to stop imminent damage, and so there is no need to rush to judgment. Don't close discussions or take actions too quickly.
Keep your discussion as unemotional as possible. By fostering a productive, reasoned dialogue, fewer people will feel an urgency to cutoff discussion quickly with action.
Consider throttling the number of responses you make and instead letting others have their say before responding. In addition to allowing everyone time to mull over what has been said already, this helps achieve a broader amount of input from the entire community.

Work together towards a solution

Wikipedia's strength is its potential to draw together contributors from many backgrounds to work together. This can apply just as well to dispute resolution as content creation. Bear in mind that everyone has to work together again once the current issue has been resolved; please moderate your statements to maintain a collaborative environment. Have patience and faith to let everyone weigh in, and please consider points of view other than your own when looking for the best way forward. In some cases, the selected approach will be an amalgam of various ideas; please help everyone pull together by being open to as many ideas to proceed as possible.