User:WaltCip/Death by proposals
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Discussions, typically those on WP:AN or WP:ANI involving user conduct or policy changes, can grind uselessly to a halt as a result of oversaturation of good-faith proposals resulting in muddying of consensus. |
Consensus
[edit]The principles of consensus in context of closing discussions on Wikipedia is straightforward enough, and in reviewing policy pages such as WP:CONSENSUS and WP:CLOSE, can more or less be boiled down to the following principles:
- Consensus is not determined by counting heads or counting votes.
- Consensus is determined by excluding arguments based solely on personal opinion, arguments contradicting established policy, or arguments from ignorance or fallacy.
- Consensus need not be perfect nor total to exist.
Consensus can most easily be found or determined in discussions where there are two specifically diametrically opposed viewpoints. This includes viewpoints that have subcategories/degrees. For example, an argument to delete or keep an article might also have options of "redirect", "merge" or "userfy". Ultimately, those three additional options would still be considered "delete" if the outcome is the removal of the article in question.
Many discussions on Wikipedia really are that simple. Others are not. Consider discussions specifically containing to user conduct. The two opposed viewpoints in this case might be "sanctions" versus "no sanctions". Unfortunately, unlike delete or keep where the definitions are straightforward and purely fundamental, "sanctions" is a broad, nearly unlimited sphere of options ranging from warnings to topic bans to interaction bans to partial blocks to full blocks, etc.. Because of this, a discussion can be derailed or even terminated simply by providing an overwhelming number of proposals for users to vote on, to the point that it becomes impossible for an admin to assess consensus. And because "no consensus" more or less defaults to "do nothing", all users within the discussion are left frustrated that Wikipedia cannot seem to do anything to stop tendentious or uncivil editors.
How this occurs
[edit]TBA
Analysis
[edit]TBA