Communal enabling of quality
On enwiki, I get the strong impression that discussions touching on quality have at times been productive, but at other times held up by inadequate decision making structures that haven't quite scaled to that community. Getting a proposal considered - even if likely to benefit quality - is inordinately difficult. Part of that is because it's unstructured and hard to evaluate balance, also because discussion varies so much that there is no easy way to assess "balance of good points made" -- the points for (and how strongly held) and the points against (and how strongly held), so it becomes a sort of "guess your own vote" based vaguely on numbers and column inches.
A major step to quality would be to find a way to help communities make their own quality decisions easier, in future. That would have a strong long term effect. (The old "teach people to fish, rather than giving them fish" thing).
We have an opportunity here to say to all our communities, "Look, folks, a reason quality improvement decisions may not be made as fast and well as it could, is that communal discussions themselves haven't ever been designed for consensus on this scale. If you focus on it, and figure a way to improve consensus seeking on big decisions in your wiki, then you can do quality improvement easier yourselves. If that's not a problem holding back your wiki now, then judging by bigger projects it will be in future."
Issues this applies to on enwiki, for example, that it might apply to on other projects: - disagreements about reliability of sources, balance of mainstream views, new and amended editor processes, deployment of new proposed tools, proposals for ways to handle conflict and disruption better...
... all kinds of things, because they all work on consensus, and we haven't ever looked at that in its own right, as an underlying factor in how wikis operate.
That's where this post came from. make of it what you will :)
Just in case you missed it, I checked in from the community health task force with a comment. Some of us are definitely investigating the connection between community health and disputes. My comment is upthread.
My apologies, I have been away and sick and am joining the discussion late. I think FT2 raises an important point. My view may be slightly different than his in this matter - I think the anarchic nature of the Wikipedia community has both advantages and disadvantages. I do not thin that we should abandon this. What I mean is, I think that the anarchic aspect of the community is one thing that distinguishes Wikipedia from other projects and should be retained, and I also mean that any approach would have plusses and minuses, and in this case, I am content with the pluses and minuses in the anarchic community.
I think Woodwalker introduces a separate point. I agree that our articles should report a consensus "out in the real world" when appropriate. For example, the article on evolution is based on a consensus among life scientists, the article on gravity is based on a consensus among physicists, and so on. But I think FT2 is raising a different matter. Namely, in some articles there may be disagreement among Wikipedia editors as to what the consensus of x (biologists, physicists, Christians, etc), or may disagree as to whose consensus should be included (for example, the evolution article does not cover the consensus among creationists). In these matters, we hope that Wikipedia editors themselves can reach a consensus.
I know AN/I, ArbCom, and many other Wikipedians are tired of the difficulties in achieving consensus among editors working on some articles. I respect FT2's interest in exploring possible mechanisms to help in consensus-building. Personally, I do not think this is the major problem facing us.
Personally, I think that the core content policies (NPOV, V and NOR) are in most cases adequate external criteris that editors can refer to in trying to forge a consensus. I think the the DE policy is essential to help sanction editors who refuse to participate in a consensus-building way (namely, meaning you respond in good faith to other people's views, and are attentive to their good faith responses to your views). I think in most cases a relatively stable consensus can be forged given time - sometimes hours, but yes, sometimes weeks. I know weeks can sound like a long time to a Wikiholic, but it really isn't.
Am I missing the point? I don't mind good faith disagreement, but I do care to make sure I am actually responding to the issue FT2 raised. Slrubenstein 13:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I actually think that consensus is a pretty core problem. At least for community health. I know you guys are focusing on quality, so maybe it's less important for you. (I'm sort of checking in from the other task force whenever our discussions overlap.)
But I think it's really interesting that you think NPOV, V, and NOR can settle a lot of issues. I actually think that you're right in a lot of cases. A lot of the consensus problems actually fall apart because people either don't understand or don't care about those. (You were right to point out that it takes time for a newbie to understand them.) Someone insists "I'm not neutral? This is an important issue among [whatever group] and Wikipedia is full of [other group] bias!" Or "it's verifiable in www.johnny'swebsite.tv!!!" Or "it's verifiable, but I'm not going to look for sources, so just look at the google hits." The problem gets worse among Wikilawyers though -- then they actually continue to insist that they're meeting NPOV and V and NOR. They will wikilawyer "there is no consensus that johnny'swebsite is unreliable." ... and then there's "ignore all rules".
Maybe one really effective thing that the board could do is give backing to the core content policies? It could actually help in a lot of discussions.
Great thread and I know the community health team is wrestling with this as well. Change is hard and getting consensus for change in a well-established community is the hardest part. When I think of the work I've done with clients over the years, it is rare that there is an emergent consensus from the diffuse community that change is needed. In addition, a top-down change mandate rarely works either unless there is a huge crisis.
My read on where Wikimedia is today is that there is a strong consensus about the purpose Wikimedia serves (the vision) and a growing consensus that the way the community is engaging around article quality is becoming an obstacle both in terms of the ability to reach high quality consensus on articles (too much "last person standing wins") and on acceptance/cultivation of new editors with expertise to contribute to existing articles as well as new areas.
I wonder if the strategy to start to tackle these challenges is one of many small innovations/experiments, some that might take hold and others that might fail. For example, what if a small group of editors developed a new approach to consensus building on an article. They might set out some simple guidelines and then commit to follow those guidelines. They might also volunteer to facilitate discussions on articles where there are tough disputes. Over time, these guidelines and behaviors would evolve (get improved) and they might provide an alternative way to engage.
I could imagine a bunch of better ideas than this, but I think the "solution" will come from many small changes by many people that add up to a major culture change rather than a big bang shift in the culture.
Thanks again for the continued great dialogue on this issue.
--BarryN 18:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Barry. Those are good points for community health. We're discussing how we form consensus and make decisions. Adding/changing roles (e.g.: facilitators) in our organizational structure is another thing we're discussing.
Those two areas are high on my list, personally. We'll see what other task force members think.