Ownership

There is a quandry at the heart of WP: what is authority? It has now grown so large that domains are fighting over the question: should Ignore All Rules (a WP base concept) have dominion over the preference for analytical commentary? What balance should be maintained between secondary (authority commentators) and original sources in some domains like History, where the original source trumps the commentator unless the commentator can display a wider context? The problem manifests itself in the maintenance of quality on a particular page: quis custodiet? We refute Original Research, but post anything, often by non-researchers. How is the tension to be maintained between a healthy IAR and the status-quo? Is there even a status-quo to be identified? Perhaps it's time for editors to be prepared to remove the mask: a declared editor should always be recognised in preference to a scaramouche. We thereby come to the nub of the question: should pages have a patron, a father-figure overlooking them with benevolent kindness, possibly representing their domain on one of the Project Groups? Should the Project Groups appoint patrons? And thereby we creep into a delicate field of ownership. I think it is now essential that the projects become more hands-on, and that disputes should be firstly invigilated by the relevant project itself. We may of course then find conflict between projects, where a page is common to several, but that is a bridge they can cross as and when, in goodwill.

That may be a very good question "There is a quandry at the heart of WP: what is authority? " Officially the project aims to put together the finest quality encyclopedia possible, and there is no authority whatsoever but only the NPoV, NOR, and V standard against which contributions are to be measured.

In practice, it does not work this way and there are lots of users that do claim and do exercise authority. Most of these don't hold by the NPoV, NOR, and V standard, but base their claim on a consensus and a community; their policing (and enforcing of whatever it is that they feel they are an authority on) scares away those that do follow the NPoV, NOR, and V standard. - Brya 05:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe this to be one of the central challenges that Wikimedia faces today. The notion of "consensus" is often used as a crutch, because it's impossible to define "consensus" if you don't first define from whom you're trying to get consensus. This often serves as a paralyzing force: People are afraid to act, because they're waiting for consensus, when it's impossible to know if you have consensus.

I think the underlying question is: What can we do to empower individuals? In a way, the original principle of IAR (Ignore All Rules) was in the spirit of empowerment, but as the person who started this thread pointed out, we seem to have lost that spirit.

Hmmm, sociologically/pathologically interesting: I've never thought of IAR that way, but of course you're right. I've always considered it a "safety net" to prevent lawyering ourselves to death. It naturally follows that it's about empowering people to do the right thing... interesting pondering. :)

I think there's a relationship between consensus and IAR. Both were supposed to be good. But it's reached a point where both are used to undermine each other.

Ignoring all rules meant that you could be bold, and that you wouldn't have to wait. And that you were always allowed to pursue the "exception to the rule", where people had agreed upon the rule and the rule just didn't make sense. Meanwhile, consensus meant that you couldn't just do this recklessly. Consensus was what kept people talking to each other, trying to work out differences, and collaborating.

Now the consensus rule is used to stonewall and prevent discussion. "No consensus, sorry, you're not allowed to do it." And in the rare situation where there is some kind of consensus, where a bunch of editors have been able to hammer out a generally agreed principle, IAR is used by a vocal minority to keep the conflict going until there is no end.

It used to be that IAR and consensus caused the community to come up with newer and better ways of doing things. But now IAR and consensus are almost always used to prevent any change or compromise.