Article ownership Re: avoiding forks (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?)

Thu Feb 17 00:20:49 UTC 2005

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:59:43 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:

> There are many pages which are "owned" now by small cabals of editors,
> because they can revert away anyone who disagrees with them. In the
> spirit of "no formalized page ownership" this should be addressed. My
> proposal is tighten the revert rule to be content based, that is three
> reverts of particular content in a day is the limit, in each direction,
> and that after that people making further reverts are blocked.  Then
> create categories for RFC and reverting, requiring that someone
> reverting an article place the article in one of the categories based
> on the reason for the revert. This isn't that much more work, and will
> automatically create a tracking system which is better than searching
> edit summaries and better than relying on RFC. The RFC process as is
> would remain in place as a way of giving a more detailed explanation of
> the source of the dispute. I feel the more "automatic" we make the
> process of "raising a red flag" on an article, the more it will be done
> rather than edit warring it out.
> 
> Commitment to an open process of consensus means, I think, that we
> examine where that process is not yet acceptable to people who are
> able, energetic and knowledgeable, and who we want as contributors.

I don't see how your proposals are going to help. In some cases, yes,
a new person can shed a new light on the matter and find a compromise.
But in cases where there is, as you write, a "cabal" "owning" the
page, getting more people in will only make the discussion being
fought louder, not the solution being brought nearer. There is
currently no way to decide what shape a page should have if there is
no consensus. As long as we do not have that, bringing in more people
will only cause the same arguments to be made over and over again.

Andre Engels