[WikiEN-l] So you think you can be a Wikipedia article

Mon Jul 31 07:55:11 UTC 2006

Peter Ansell wrote:

>On 29/07/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>Both direct and representative democracy have their shortcomings.  A
>>truly democratic system should be temporal as well as spatial.  In other
>>words there cna be no final determinative vote on almost anything
>>because those votes make no allowance for the views of those who have
>>not yet joined us.
>>    
>>
>That was a joke right? You can't just wait forever because someone
>"might" come. Policies in the real world have to be made in some
>finite timespace. Half of wikipedia's problems may indeed come from
>the fact that policies are argued over endlessly, through opinions
>like yours that the more argument/time and effort spent, the better
>the situation will "possibly be". Ever heard of the concept of
>diminishing returns, and/or the concept of negative return on
>investment.
>
No joke about it.  In the real world controversial policies can be 
decided by votes where there are winners and losers.  The the winners 
fight like hell to protect the status quo.  Sure, decisions need to be 
made, and nothing that I said supported waiting forever.  When support 
reaches a certain level a policy is adopted, but people can continue 
adding their views, or even changing them.  When that threshold reaches 
an other predetermined level the policy is changed.  I also said nothing 
about anybody spending more time argument and effort than they already 
have.  If you already made your point in the early stages why would you 
feel obliged to keep arguing.  Policies with a broad community support 
are unlikely to ever change anyways, but there will be more incentive to 
develop policies co-operatively rather than by the old win lose model..

Diminishing and negative returns have nothing to do with this.

Ec