[Wikipedia-l] Educating newcomers

Tue Nov 19 23:13:00 UTC 2002

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 ;-)

> The reason the debate is not over, is that we old-timers have a
> responsibility to educate newcomers.

Well, Lir (Bridget) is not quite that new. Besides, the problem in this  
case is not that she's not aware of our policies but that she wants to  
change them. Advocating to do so is perfectly OK, and I pointed out, as  
others have, why this would be a bad idea. If all goes well, the debate  
will end soon, and everyone will follow conventions. We could even add the  
resulting arguments to an FAQ.

The problem I see is that in a consensus-finding decision making process,  
a single dedicated person can prolong discourse forever. If democracy is  
the "tyranny of the majority", consensus-finding is the tyranny of the  
cranks. 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. 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.

That's why I will work more on the Wikipedia:Decision Making Process page  
as soon as I have the time, and encourage others to do so.

Regards,

Erik