[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Educating newcomers

Wed Nov 20 01:59:39 UTC 2002

Erik Moeller wrote:

>A mail from Ed? Surely this cannot be, as you just announced your
>departure from the project a couple of days ago (for the second time), and
>wrote that Wikipedia is doomed. Or are you perhaps a bit moody? Let me
>guess, the big advantage of Sunday school over Wikipedia was that it was
>*only* on Sundays ;-)

Ah, he's only bluffing ^_^.
(I hope *_*.)

>The problem I see is that in a consensus-finding decision making process,
>a single dedicated person can prolong discourse forever.

A *single* person can't prolong the decision-making process forever,
because we have enough people around that lack of a single person
is no obstacle to reaching a consensus.  Consensus != unanimity
(in English, although apparently it does mean that in French --
see some earlier posts between me and Anthere).

And even with a voting mechanism in place, a single dedicated person
could still prolong *discourse* forever.  Or would you censor speech?
[[Democratic centralism]] != democracy (indeed, the term is a misnomer).
Whatever decision-making process we use, those who dissent
must still always have the right to express that dissent,
or democracy is over, whatever of its trappings may remain.

>Nothing in our rules says that Lir cannot continue the debate
>about naming conventions forever -- so it would be wrong for us to punish
>her if she does.

Absolutely wrong!  Voting is one thing, but if this much *ever* changed,
then there would be no democracy left in Wikipedia, and I would have to leave.

>And I'm afraid that when people get tired of our tedious  
>decision making process, they will want to resort to more drastic forms of  
>enforcement and more permanent power structures, which will in turn lead  
>to wrong decisions, alienation, power struggles.

Agreed, but IMO, that's exactly what *you* are trying to do ^_^.
(Don't misunderstood me; I know that your intentions are only the best.
I only think that the effect would be bad.)

-- Toby