From: Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Voting and "!voting", what's the difference?
On 8/28/09, Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
Polling
and voting is a good way to see what people think without having to
wade through a mass of comments.
If you can't be bothered to
engage in discussion, I agree that voting
or "!voting" is the way to go.
That's a cop out!
You can't build consensus by polling or
"!polling". You can't make a
decision based on consensus if you can't be bothered to read.
In that case no-one is accepting responsibility for the results.
Ec
From: Emily Monroe <bluecaliocean(a)me.com
A true
consensus requires everyone to agree (or, at least, not
object).
You're right.
To a point, but you also need to make allowance for the person who only
finds out about the issue after the discussion is over, and a decision
made. If he significantly disagrees with the decision the consensus is
not longer valid.
That is why things like RFA work on "rough
consensus", which
actually just means a vote.
See, my vision of "rough
consensus" is something like "If you
eliminate people who !vote without leaving any comment to debate upon,
and who hasn't participate in the debate elsewhere, or who do
something like WP:WHYNOT, WP:NOTNOW, or WP:I[DON'T]LIKEIT what do you
get?" I guess this would be a vote in a sense, albeit a very skewed one.
Emily
I'm not about to spend time exploring what these shortcuts mean, though
they sound very much like excuses for quashing discussion. Maybe the
person did participate in the discussion elsewhere and elsewhen, but
under a completely different heading and with completely contrary
results. Eliminating people who vote without commenting is a problem
too. They may agree or disagree with the main points and arguments that
have already been made, but to comment would just add repetitious
verbiage. Counting the raw number of distinct arguments made for or
against as votes isn't very reliable either because it assumes equal
weight for each argument.
Ec
Ec