On 10/27/05, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Your opinion, while interesting, is kind of
notable for utterly
contradicting what Jimbo has said repeatedly about the community, and
the fact that we are not a democracy.
-Snowspinner
I try to be a realist. The current size of the project means that we
know have people or even groups of people who will never agree on
anything ever. The time needed to carry out the length of debate
needed to get anything close to consensus is now so long that if we
want a result withing a decade we have to use supermajority rather
than consensus. No amout of jumping up and down saying wikipedia is
not a democracy is going to change that.
Fortunetly when it comes to individual articles the number of people
involved is small enough that consensus is still posible in a large
number of cases.
By presuming that there can be no easy agreement you don't give it a
chance to happen. If is takes a little longer that's far more
acceptable than the confrontational approach that has been prevailing
lately. You would be surprised by the positive resultes you would get
by showing a little good faith.
Ec