Wikipedia:Issues/Long-term discussions/Forum

From a wiki-en thread : 'a modest proposal: a recap of resolution-l'

> [let's devote] specific attention to long-term facilitation of discussion and
> resolution of difficult issues.  There is something about wiki-time (to
> borrow a term [from awadewit]) that discourages measured discussion over time - if you miss
> the flashpoint discussion that sets a precedent, people may have moved on
> and you'll have to restart the original interest again.  [-sj]

Ironically, wikis are so far the online medium which have done best at long-term conversations: I routinely see talk page conversations where the gaps between one message and another may be a year or three. This is not something I've ever been able to say of email lists, IRC chat, IM, newsgroups, social sites, web aggregators, most every blog... --Gwern (contribs) 06:27 30 July 2009 (GMT)

Probably to do with the stable central point - the page being discussed. All the other mediums you mention are transient. New articles hardly anyone returns to. Here, the encyclopedia pages are (in theory) kept up-to-date. Carcharoth, Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:41 PM

When there is a namespace set aside for central points, such as individual topics, wikis do this brilliantly. But many wiki processes simply archive without a central point (or have a week-long discussion which is then frozen, no more discussion to be had).

One aspect of a community facilitation project would be to define a namespace for issues, which might be moved and renamed over time, but would not be 'closed' or 'archived' because someone thought a particular proposed implementation was not a good idea. If someone thought it was an issue to consider, then it is a valid point in the namespace, and will always be so. Someone else might come up with a great resolution to that issue in the future; it might be effectively merged with other similar issues; it mght be better understood as a combination of two resolvable issues. Or it might just remain, with fluctuating priority, as something intractable yet important-to-someone. +sj+

For instance, I was looking for the latest thoughts on the topic of 'How to create notability guidelines for a new category' (since Category:Wikipedia notability guidelines is pretty sparse) without success. And the a little while before that I wanted to see who else thought G8 shouldn't be used to speedy delete talk pages or subpages with valuable discussions. I had a specific example that would have contributed to the idea that talk pages should be preserved... but there was only a scattering of a dozen discussions across many different talkpage archives.

A permanent page for each of these issues, perhaps with one or more self-selected facilitators willing to help incorporate new thoughts and more towards a long-term resolution, would be interesting. To start with, you could seed the issues namespace with the perennial proposals. WP:PEREN does not do these justice; and in short order a good facilitator could replace each of the "Reason for previous rejection" statements with a reworded but equally accurate "Current compromise or resolution". +sj+

I just ran across this so "missed the flash point". I was recently involved in a discussion that I think has been "serious" for a long time. I think that a common place to air concerns is a good idea. Otr500 (talk) 09:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)