Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Archive 1

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Starting period

This page started in March 2005, under another name, got a fair amount of use (see the decisions page) and little comment. The first section of comments below was made to a new proposal, Wikipedia Standards, which was perceived as unnecessary, and the interesting parts of it where merged here. Radiant_>|< 17:23, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Comments to Wikipedia:Standards

I know the page author is acting in good faith, but I must point to m:Instruction creep. It says it all, really, especially the central fallacy.

We already have a tremendous amount of policies and guidelines. We need to be cutting down, not making more! Dan100 (Talk) 13:02, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

  • You are quite possibly right. This page was inspired by the fact that such debates are rather frequent, and that some of them boil down into semantics of procedure. This would solve the latter, but it is not a given fact that standardisation of (parts of) the Pedia is a good idea. Radiant_>|< 13:22, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm piling on, but I agree with Dan100. Maurreen (talk) 16:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't get it - first you disagree with a straw poll because there isn't a previously-agreed-upon way to hold it, and now you disagree with creating an agreed-upon way for polling? Radiant_>|< 09:16, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

We already have an organized listing of existing, proposed, and historical standards (see Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines). WP:RFC is supposed to be the central place to list current discussions, and you can also publicize on the Village Pump, over IRC, etc. We also already have Wikipedia:How to create policy. So, this page seems like it creates more problems than it solves. The discussion that inspired this page was forgotten mostly because WP:CFD did not document its decisions very well. (The archiving process appears to have lost the link.) If anything needs fixing, it's that process. -- Beland 13:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Okay, fair enough, this would be mostly redundant in that case. However, my point is this: CFD (and to a lesser extent, TFD) suffers from repeated discussion. It should be possible to gather consensus on (e.g.) whether "category:female biologists" is useful or overcategorization - and if the latter is decided, it should be replacable without requiring a separate CFD debate for each similar instance. If we cannot accept that, CFD is a lottery. Radiant_>|< 13:39, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

If I read this correctly, there are three principal aims here:

  1. To have policy discussions permanently linked off a single, centralized page;
  2. Deployment of an agreed-to proposal; and
  3. To harden up the means by which a poll of some kind might be held.

As to #3, I think it is probably already sufficiently covered in Wikipedia:Survey guidelines and Wikipedia:How to hold a consensus vote. That those pages are widely overlooked is unsurprising; they don't have memorable shortcuts, need merging and are of unclear joint-status (only one of them is a guideline). I think some efforts there would be useful. We should wind up with several shortcuts to one appropriately named page e.g. WP:SURVEY, WP:VOTE and WP:POLL (see no, hear no, speak no). A straightforward merge would not be hard to achieve here, but the pages lack a clear take-home-message and a user acting alone would be burnt at the stake. Still, this is largely an aesthetic exercise. -Splash 22:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Yes, those are the aims. You are correct that this would be redundant with survery guidelines and the consensus vote page; I will see to it that they are merged and put some place public. Radiant_>|< 08:30, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

As to #1, well, I think that is a useful idea. Ok, so there's a heap at the bottom of The Most Hated Page in Wikipedia: space, but it doesn't do the job that the proposal here sets out to achieve. Ok, so there are categories that contain policies etc, but there are (at least) four of them: Category:Wikipedia official policy, Category:Wikipedia proposals, Category:Wikipedia rejected policies (misnamed) and Category:Wikipedia guidelines. Even so, I can't locate the recent discussion on VfD renomination limits/GNAA (presuming it hasn't been moved to Admin war: space). Retaining the cats (in some form) as an after-the-fact labelling for the discussions is OK, but lifting the process off of RfC and into a dedicated arena seems like a good idea. As such, having one page (e.g. WP:STANDARDS) that users need to go to find all current discussions would make the whole publicity thing much easier to achieve and having one (recommended) underlying format would make comprehension of and contribution to debates easier to achieve. The current proposal needs work (it looks too much like a poll by any other name) but is far from dead in the water. It provides a useful opportunity to extract the key philosophies from Wikipedia:How to create policy and Wikipedia:Consensus and encourage their adoption from the outset of each discussion. There's no m:instruction creep since it is just a templatizing of existing instructions/guidelines/etc and anyone can shoehorn the template how they like. But with a well-designed formatting, the discussions might begin headed in a better direction. Structuring the main WP:STANDARDS page to make it easier to find the various proposal of various statuses would take some thought, but I feel sure we must be able to do better than four categories and a whole bunch of templates. -Splash 22:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the response.
  • Why is 'rejected policies' a misnomer?
  • The GNAA policy was thrown away as part of a m:forest fire; it was deemed undesirable to have a policy pertaining to only a single page, or even a precedent thereto.
  • Most 'wikipedia proposals' are put on RFC at some point. It usually helps in getting feedback.
  • Having a central location would be nice. RFC could be limited to content matters, and the part that is policy moved to a separate page (say, RFC/Policy, possibly transcluded, but this allows for easier watchlisting). It would be nice to have a common process. This could be considered a heavily-rewordable draft.
  • Oh yes - this should not be the required way to do it; it should simply be an agreed-upon workable way to do it. So that if people ask how to create a guideline, they can be sent here for an example.
  • Radiant_>|< 08:30, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • 'Rejected policies" is a misnomer semnatically; they were only ever proposals if they were rejected (and might have only wanted to be guidelines).
    • I thought the GNAA stuff had been all redirected to somewhere central called "VfD renomination limits or something". Evidently not.
    • I've written a draughty draft of a guideline to how-to-write-a-proposal at Wikipedia:Standards/Proposal guideline. Note that the {{proposal}} tag is inteneded to apply to both this page and to be included on any proposals which use the layout!
    • Something ought to be done about unifying Wikipedia:Current surveys and WP:RfC into one place. -Splash 19:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Rejected policies - true, ok we can throw it on CFD for renaming once more.
      • GNAA - yes, that's roughly what happened, only one step further.
      • Draft - ok, I'll look over it.
      • RFC/CS - I've merged them last week, and will pay some further attention soon. Radiant_>|< 00:04, August 14, 2005 (UTC)


As to #2, this will be controversy-central. Care must be taken not to disallow future discussion of a supposedly-settled issue and to avoid unintended consequences — particularly the unintended extension of WP:CSD by comparatively small numbers of people. Small numbers are not in themselves a problem; after election the politicians bemoan how few of us vote, but the system still 'works'. But with touchy subjects like WP:CSD a broader quorum is needed. Thinking out loud, why is it that WP:MUSIC and WP:FICT work? What makes them become de facto policy? Thinking about that might show us how we can encourage the creation of future good guidelines that are self-'enforcing'. -Splash 22:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • This should indeed be a separate issue. However, note that CSD already allows us to redelete substantially identical recreations of deleted material. Thus, once Category:Blondes is deleted, we can speedily delete any reincarnations. It sounds reasonable to me to include Category:Brunettes, but people may object to that. Also note that most such issues can be dealth with through speedy renaming, which is far less controversial. But certainly, any process should allow for an easy way of reopening past discussions. Radiant_>|< 08:30, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • That's interesting. I think in the kind of example you cite, it would be a fairly strong response to refer to the prior related discussion. However, it would be better to initiate discussion about categorising by hair colour generally.
    • The "substantially identical" CSD is worded to only apply to articles, although I imagine it could be applied to templates/redirects without causing a fight. This is, to my mind, a question related to content. So I'm not sure that the kind of cats you give above would fall within the CSDs ambit since their contents would be very different. -Splash 19:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
      • The "substantially identical" clause is in the "general" section, so applies equally to templates, categories, images and redirects. But yes, CSD'ing is likely to be controversial. However, the issue could be solved in almost all cases by a merge-and-redirect. Radiant_>|< 00:04, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

As an aside, it is too easy to just cry "m:instruction creep" and not give the suggestions any further thought. Even though that page works on a "guilty until proven innocent" principle, it is harder to fillet out the good bits of a possibly creep-prone proposal than it is to dismiss the whole thing out-of-hand with a stock phrase. Rarely does a suggestion contain so little merit that it can be dealt with in two words. -Splash 22:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Hi Splash! I'm going to thread my answers some place in the middle of the discussion. I'm sure you can figure it out. Since we're the main interested people here, we should probably clean this up together until it's workable, and then pose it to the community. Radiant_>|< 00:04, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

what problem does this solve?

I think before going much farther with this proposal we should be very clear about what problem is being addressed. I definitely agree there is a problem, but my first impression is that the currently stated goal, to provide a centralized, streamlined process by which Wikipedia can create standards from consensus, is inherently unachievable since Wikipedia is not centralized and (IMO) consensus driven processes cannot be streamlined. As Beland points out above, Wikipedia:How to create policy already exists. How, exactly, are the proposed standards different from newly created policies or changes to existing policies? This proposal was almost certainly created in response to Wikipedia:Category titles, which I think could be argued amounts to a suggested change to WP:CG (and, perhaps, Wikipedia:Naming conventions).

I believe the "wiki way" is for structure to evolve bottom up rather than be imposed top down, generally favoring small incremental changes. Extreme Programming moderates this with a rule that says there must not be any redundant code, which ensures structural evolution (refactoring) will occur. I don't see the wikipedia analogy to this rule.

I would very much like to hear from some of the older hands. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:21, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

  • This page solves (or is intended to solve) two things. First, every now and then someone suggests we should standardize some issue, and there is no real process to accomplish that. Several of these suggestions are quite reasonable (e.g. "all talk page templates should look the same", or "this group of articles should have similar titles"). Arguably, Wikipedia would look more professional if such standards exist. That does not mean we should blindly cling to them (and for instance a standard on British vs American English would be entirely too large in scope to enforce) but for instance if you see a talk page template that is the wrong color, you can simply change it and point people to the standards page.
  • Which brings us to the second point - this issue comes up daily on WP:CFD. People frequently, and in good faith, nominate categories for renaming in an effort to make them match the overall categorization scheme. Certain schemes have their opponents. This means that for every single instance of (for instance) categorization-by-skin-color, or of thing-of-country vs. countryish-thing, we have to discuss it again, hear all the arguments again, and the end result will be somewhat randomly dependent on whomever happens to be online that particular week. Repetitive discussions are rather pointless, detract from people's time, and can get people angry. Hence, an effort to hold one central discussion rather than hundred identical fragmented ones.
  • It may help to restrict this policy to category names, article names and template layout. Other issues are likely to be too large to tackle. Radiant_>|< 18:49, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

But aren't category names and article names already standardised by the naming conventions? If there are areas which don't have standards and are needed, they should be discussed there. I don't do much work on templates, but do they have their own standards? Steve block talk 10:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

  • In theory, yes. In practice, not all naming conventions represent consensus (and it's hard to tell which do). Templates don't have standards to my knowledge (except for WP:TS, and an effort at WP:IS). The main problem is that if I were to nominate a category for renaming in order to make it match a naming convention, then people will oppose that on grounds that they don't like the convention. This leads to many repetitive debates, particularly on WP:CFD. We could either allow for many repetitive debates (particularly on WP:CFD) as we do now, or we could state that a central debate if it shows consensus obviates the need for local debates. Of course the central debate can be restarted if wanted. But often, there's an obvious consensus for A and a vocal minority for B; if the issue at hand is naming or layout, then the consensus should win.
  • This process is indeed meant to create or modify naming conventions (but also layout conventions, and possibly others - hence the generic name). Radiant_>|< 11:31, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Then I think we need to sort out what is going on at naming conventions and which ones are policy, because as far as I was aware, all naming conventions are policy, if not immutable. I would have thought any votes that oppose the naming convention without good reason could just be rejected, and example of a good reason being American football, which would break a <of foo> standard for obvious reasons. If someone objects to the naming convention that should be discussed on the naming convention, so I don't see the need for this page. I think the process for changing or proposing a naming convention is to discuss it on the WP:NC talk page or the relevant convention page. The template issues should probably be best addressed at WP:TS. I don't feel we need another seperate page in the wikipedia namespace. It is hard enough to find stuff as it is. Someone needs to write a bloody good index page of procedures at wikipedia if you ask me. Steve block talk 11:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
    • That's true, and such an index is on my to-do list. No voting process presently throws out votes that are not according to standard (even if that might help). There's presently discussion on a guideline for creating or modifying naming conventions, at Wikipedia talk:Category titles. You are correct that this page should probably be some place else, but note that WP:NC does not specify a way of creating conventions, and WP:TS is a singular discussion related to a certain group of articles. If nothing else, I'll change this page to a list of redirects when discussion is done. Radiant_>|< 12:06, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
      • WP:NC does not specify a way of creating new conventions, which is something that should probably be amended, however, Wikipedia:Categories for deletion policies does specify that any new criteria for speedily renaming should be proposed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions. I think at some point, once an index is done, a big sort out needs to be embarked upon and policies should be condensed and made mutually agreeable. I thought on VFD votes could be discounted if they did not meet the established voting arrangement. But it should certainly be the case that if one is arguing against the standard that argument should be directed at the standard rather than the rename. Steve block talk 13:28, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes. The original intent of speedy renaming was to adopt naming conventions as speedy-renaming criteria. That hasn't happened so far, apparently for lack of interest in the matter. I guess we could use a WikiProject:Clean out Wikipedia Namespace. It's a big task and may get slightly legalistic. Myself I occasionally clean out Cat:Proposals and Cat:Guidelines to keep them reasonable. However, someone has recently noted that policy pages tend to accumulate cruft and should be trimmed (because nobody reads them otherwise). Radiant_>|< 13:42, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
    • We might as well just reactivate Wikiproject:Wikipedia Namespace at some point. I'd agree policy pages should be short, but there should at least be a chain through which one can follow and absorb the relevant information. Steve block talk 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd have no problem with that. Steve block talk 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Merged

I've taken the established process Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus and moved it to the more apt name here, and merged in a few items from the instruction-creepish Wikipedia:Standards. Note that all comments above are about the latter. Radiant_>|< 13:39, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

I think this page is a good idea, and well put together. I have some questions, though:

  1. The 2/3 majority will prove controversially low; was this taken from another document somewhere? Might some woollier phrasing be more appropriate?
  2. The /Conclusions — WP:FICT is included but WP:MUSIC isn't. I suspect there must be a particular reason?
  3. Would it be sensible to provide a two-way link on those project pages to this /conclusions page, as well as a mention on the Talk: page?
  4. (Was the /Conclusions page taken from somewhere else?)
  5. (If it wasn't, does putting them on a /Conclusions page constitute a promotion from guideline to 'conclusion', and is that a new level of Wikipedia document?)

-Splash 20:23, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

  1. Oh yes. 2/3 majority taken from Survey Guidelines. 70% may be better actually, it's what is used everywhere else (except on RFA).
  2. WP:MUSIC predates WP:CENT. It may be appropriate to list it anyway, though.
  3. If you find it useful, please add it.
  4. No. But this entire process used to be called "policy consensus" (which is kind of a confusing name if you think of it).
  5. No, they're guidelines - and if that's unclear please reword. I don't think we need the bureaucracy of another level (semi-pol was bad enough already).
  • Thanks for the feedback. Radiant_>|< 07:57, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

"Proposed"

Radiant appears to give little consideration to the disagreement above. So I'm placing a "proposed" tag on this page. Maurreen (talk) 16:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Reverted. This has been in use for months now. I'm not sure if that was intended but your remark here sounds rather spiteful. Radiant_>|< 07:57, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
Given that on 17 August, you made substantive changes, I don't see how you can say "This has been in use for months." What is intended is to see whether your changes illustrate "standards or conduct that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases", because you did not "use the discussion page to propose major changes". Given that your preferred tag says "Feel free to update the page as needed", I find your "spiteful" remark inappropriate. Maurreen (talk) 15:52, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Clarify myself -- As far as I can tell, these changes to Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/Policy were not discussed until after the fact. Maurreen (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Other than the impression that things haven't been discussed, what exactly is it you're objecting to? For instance, would you say that "policy consensus" is a better name than "centralized discussion"? Also, you've got your history wrong - the discussion predates the change. Radiant_>|< 22:30, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
As far as what I object to in the content, the main thing is declaring a standard survey format, and in an inappropriate page, in my view.
Yes, it was discussed. As far as I can tell two people agreed with you, and three people disagreed.
As far as the history is concerned, let's review --
  1. You created Wikipedia:Standards on 8 August.
  2. You merged and redirected it on 17 August. Maurreen (talk) 23:57, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The discussion was before 17 august. I haven't merged in the parts that people disagreed to, to the best of my knowledge. The new version reflects how things already work - before that change there had already been WP:CENTs about CFD. Radiant_>|< 08:06, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
Well, seeing that I'm disagreeing, I don't see how you can say "I haven't merged in the parts that people disagreed to." Maurreen (talk) 14:26, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Your comments were "Sorry if I'm piling on, but I agree with Dan100. Maurreen (talk) 16:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)", by which you indicate that we do not need a new process, which this isn't; and that "We already have Wikipedia:Survey guidelines. It is not binding but includes "Consensus must be reached about the nature of the survey before it starts." Maurreen (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2005 (UTC)" - and that's precisely one of the aims of this page, to establish a consensual way for the nature of certain kinds of surveys. In other words, yes, I have taken your words into account when doing the merge. Radiant_>|< 17:09, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
You still have not demonstrated that the page "It illustrates standards or conduct that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many cases." I am putting the tag back on. Maurreen (talk) 15:38, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
  • That would be here, obviously. If you only state disagreement and are unable to state why, you do not really have a point, now do you? Radiant_>|< 15:43, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

RFC

In an effort to get wider input, I've listed this at WP:RFC. Maurreen (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

No, I'm not holding a survey, I'm requesting comments. Maurreen (talk) 23:49, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Are you aware that over half of WP:CS isn't actually surveys? Yes, it's a misnomer (just like VFD and many other old processes). I'll propose a rename. The page actually lists all ongoing policy-related debates. Radiant_>|< 08:06, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Surveys

If there is going to be a standard method for conducting surveys, that should be dealt with at Wikipedia talk:Survey guidelines. Maurreen (talk) 23:49, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Actually, Wikipedia:Survey guidelines is barely in use, and contradicted by Wikipedia:How to hold a consensus vote. But trying to enforce a standard method isn't going to work, and would be m:instruction creep. Note that this page merely suggests that people use a simple voting method that is used most everywhere else on the wiki, it isn't forcing anybody to use a standard. Radiant_>|< 08:06, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
    Could we merge the three pages into one, somehow, sort of have the three guidleines on one holding page, as it were? However, that said, I am not clear what the purpose of this page is. It introduces us to discussions, only one of which is a subpage, which disregards a point in the proposal, and that's about it, isn't it? Is it a neccesary page? I find myself asking what problem this page solves? Steve block talk 20:32, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Good question. The answer is that it provides a centralized forum for repetitive discussions on deletion pages. {{Cent}} is transcluded in a number of highly visible pages (such as VFD). If a certain issue comes up repeatedly, e.g. dozens of articles on characters from Tolkien are nominated for deletion in one week, it would make sense to start a centralized debate rather than rehash all arguments for each and every nomination. This issue, for instance, has given rise to WP:FICT. Radiant_>|< 08:26, August 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Okay, I like the template, don't get me wrong there, and I can see what this page is trying to do, however, my feeling is that generally we don't have any problem creating pages in the Wikipedia space to discuss anything, and if we are discussing something and we're going to make it a subpage then it seems to me best to be a subpage of something relevant to where the discussion has grown from. If it's mostly geared up for notability issues on whatever votes for deletion is, maybe it would be better merged with Wikipedia:Importance or Wikipedia:Notability? I think we need some consensus on notability issues at some point, even though it seems unachievable short term, surely it has to happen at some point? Wikipedia:WikiProject Standards anyone? Steve block talk 21:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It is not necessarily about importance or notability issues. Where exactly the subpage is located is not really relevant, and that's just a suggestion. However, a wrongly created subpage will influence the discussion (e.g. "Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Thing" has been used at times, and grossly misunderstood as an attempt to blanket-delete a group of articles). Hence, the suggestion. Radiant_>|< 13:40, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

What problem does this page solve?

I agree with Steve. I think it would make sense to return this, name and content, to Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/Policy. Maurreen (talk) 04:14, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Except that it isn't policy. It's a guideline. Also, "Votes for deletion" is being deprecated. And also, the use of this page hasn't been, and shouldn't be, restricted to the VFD process. Radiant_>|< 08:26, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Starting over

Radiant, maybe it would help us to try to make a fresh start, at least about this page.

I have no objection to this version, from 12 August, which states "This page is part of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Policy consensus."

I disagree with your changes of 17 August.

I believe that you believe that this is an improvement. I ask you to respect my right to disagree.

In my view, your change:

  1. Adds instruction for little or no gain.
  2. Separates material about "foobar" from the pages obviously with "foobar" in the name (in other words, overcentralization, or miscentralization).
    1. This adds complexity with little or no gain.
    2. It sets a standard for surveys. Regardless of any possible merits of any such standard, my view is that any such standard should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Survey guidelines. If you have some problem with Wikipedia:Survey guidelines, that should also be addressed there.
  3. Made at least a moderate change with little or no consensus. If you believe you took into account the disagreements, I appreciate that. But you did not do so enough.

I chose to disagree in what I see as a mild form, by using the "proposed" tag. I chose not to do what could be seen as being aggressive, not to make major changes or revert.

If you can get positive community confirmation, so be it. Almost anything having to do with this page has been done by you. I do not see that as expressing the community.

I am quite willing to discuss, but I prefer not to argue. I expect that our interaction has often been frustrating for both of us. That is part of the reason I encourage others to join in.

It would be helpful if you could try to be more accommadating and diplomatic, for lack of better words.

We do not have to agree. Neither of us has to persuade the other. But we should be able to find an agreeable way to disagree.

And I am going to put the "proposed" tag back on. Maurreen (talk) 08:42, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the explanation; it helps a lot to understand what sections you actually had a problem with. I'll consider this for a while and get back to you here. Radiant_>|< 09:23, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
You're welcome. I'm glad we're coming toward a better understanding. Maurreen (talk) 18:01, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Disaster!

This page is a disaster -- the worst threat to our core principles I have seen yet. Either hold fast -- or man the lifeboats, because we have not got long to stay afloat if we let this get aboard.

I read these words:

The point is to establish a consensual guideline through discussion, not to establish a rule through voting.

Then, four separate bullet points specify precise voting methods, employing the evil word nine times, with several instances of voting-related terms ("majority", "runoff", "tied").

No need to wade through all the corrupt procedure, though, to get to the truly rancid meat: it will be necessary to hold a vote to establish firmly where consensus lies. Do not read over that one quickly! Don't swallow that swill.

VotingIsEvil, and at the very best, an expedient -- a last resort employed when consensus fails, yet there remains an emergency situation in which action must be taken. Voting is not Consensus! Voting is the opposite of consensus; it is the antithesis of consensus; it is a rude insult to The Wiki Way. Voting is the tyranny of the majority at best; it is mob rule at best; in practice, it is the tool of vote-packers, carpetbaggers, and demagogues.

On wiki, voting is even worse than in Real Life. In recent US Presidential elections, fewer than half the eligible voters cast any ballot at all; perhaps 25% of the electorate, therefore, decide for all who shall hold the power of life or death over all our heads. But on wiki, it seems that a mere 1/10th of 1% -- 20 or 30 out of about 20,000 active editors -- will be permitted to decide any issue! This is not even tyranny of the majority -- it is simple hijacking.

One thing above all sets the Wikipedian Community apart from other groups. Others are ruled by King Stork, who struts about gobbling unwary frogs; some by King Log, who sits idly by as the citizens rape and pillage; some by Zeus himself, delivering bolts of lighting amid peals of thunder to decide every issue by fiat; some are indeed debating societies, in which Robert's Rules of Order are consulted a dozen times an hour and a roll call vote must be taken before the Refreshments Subcommittee Chairperson is permitted to plug in the coffeepot.

Wikipedia, however, is ruled by consensus -- civil discussion, compromise, and inclusion. We do not shout down the minority; we hear them and integrate their needs into our joint solutions. That is the road that led us here; if we abandon it, we lose our Way and head straight for the ditch.

Keep your eye on the ball. Don't let a little slight-of-hand distract you.

The title is Centralized discussion -- with the weasel words This does not mean that this page must be used for any such discussions. But of course, if it is used, then whatever outcome must prevail. Have we not already declared that outcome to be "consensus"?

The scope is a standard for organizing content -- see, we won't discuss content itself. But of course, one way to organize content is to shove it in a drawer marked "nasty" (or any of a hundred other deprecating terms). The actual agenda as shown by the current list of so-called discussions is to merge many articles into one, necessarily throwing out content thus defined as "redundant", "superfluous", or just plain "too long". Hey, we won't actually delete any pages -- we'll just merge them all into one big article titled Random unimportant user thoughts.

Don't buy this Trojan horse! This is, of course, a very efficient way to run the railroad -- fast, easy, low-stress, certain of outcome. If it is allowed to operate for any length of time, it will certainly prove itself (on its own terms) the best possible solution to all our problems. Its scope will rapidly enlarge and, if it encounters resistance, its model will simply be replicated on another page, with a slightly different mandate. Before long, the pod people will have taken over the whole Project. Please don't be so smug as to say, "Oh, that could never happen here!"

Of course, anybody with a technical background knows that there is no such thing as a unique case; everything is an instance of a class; so one general discussion or another can eventually be stretched to decide all. Forget all other policies; forget consensus; forget Be Bold, forget WP:IAR; forget all the WikiProjects painstakingly hammering out workable solutions to local problems; forget RfC, RfM, and ArbCom -- WP:CD is here to decide everything, sooner or later.

This is not a policy proposal. This is a naked grab for power by one user who has polished a technique of vote-packing and manipulating polls to serve its narrow agenda. It is inconsistent with and incompatible with all we believe, all we stand for, all we have done over the years -- as a Community.

If you allow this to stand, we may just as well take the shortcut, buy a bus ticket to Florida, heave Jimbo into the Gulf of Mexico, and hand over the keys to the rack room. Line up, little froggies; King Stork wants his breakfast. Or get it over with quick, and set fire to the whole mess before we have to watch our fine Project sink like an iceberg-struck ship of fools.

There must be no compromise when it comes to our core, foundation principles.

Speedy delete, block, and ban.

— Xiong熊talk* 20:16, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Why conclude centralized discussions without a result?

It seems like centralized discussions are closed without any kind of resolution being adopted; see, for example, Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Sports results. If no decision has been taken, why close the discussion? --Metropolitan90 08:44, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

  • This seems to be a growing problem. All but one of the currently closed discussions have no sort of conclusion listed whatsoever. --InShaneee 21:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Would you care to write a couple? Radiant_>|< 23:46, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I'll give it a shot, I suppose, but I just wanted to mention that people are closing things without taking care of that. --InShaneee 03:20, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Thanks, but neither do people read this talk page much. And you should have seen the sheer length of {{cent}} until I started removing stuff from there once more. Radiant_>|< 11:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Categories/lists by disability

Although there has been discussion about race, gender, ethnicity, religion and there has been nothing policy-wise that I can find relative to disabilities. When is it apprpriate to mention a person's disability? Categories already exist such as Blind musicians, but how about mentally retarded Scots? If the sole notable trait that a person has is the disability, is this sufficient to justify an article? I wonder how everyone feels about this. Jtmichcock 05:04, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Category:Amputees survived a sparely visited TfD [1]. --Pjacobi 13:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Living people

Given the furor brewing, does Category_talk:Living people need to be linked here? -- nae'blis (talk) 22:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Probably not. The template is transcluded in many pages related to deletion (indeed, the idea of WP:CENT was to avoid repetitive deletion discussions for related articles). This cat has nothing to do with deletion, and it's already advertised at WP:AN which is about as central as you'll get. Radiant_>|< 01:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't appear to be linked to WP:AN anymore. -- Samuel Wantman 22:52, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
  • No, but ANI does. Anyway, a better place to advertise this would probably be the village pump; it does not really concern deletion, but could be important to the entire wiki. At least I believe that's Jimbo's point. Radiant_>|< 23:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Question

Wasn't centralized discussion and {{cent}} supposed to be about deletion only? Because I think neither Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Enforcement nor Wikipedia:Admin accountability poll are primarily about deletion, and don't belong on {{cent}}. If CD is not only about deletion, the description page needs a major update/complete rewrite. -- grm_wnr Esc 06:42, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Its initial intent was, yes, to replace dozens of identical discussions on AFD (or, later, CFD) with one centralized discussion. The way it is used now, it is a random subset of RFC and should probably be either deprecated, or changed to a less random subset. Radiant_>|< 11:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

"Old discussion"

Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Legislative candidates has been moved to "Old discussions." However, the centralized discussion on legislative candidates has yet to reach a consensus, unfortunately. Should it still be in "Discussions?" -- Mwalcoff 01:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I moved it there because there was no discussion going on any more at that point. It was unfortunate that there wasn't a consensus, but something unresolved that isn't being discussed any more, is not an active discussion. However, if you wish to reactivate the issue, feel free to move it back. Radiant_>|< 12:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew

I thought this might be the proper place to bring this. This page was listed as closed, and from reading it, consensus seemed quite clear. So, I wrote a conclusion based on what I saw. However, some user is now insisting on in the conclusion stating that the discussion is invalid and the conclusions can be 'safely ignored'. Could someone please take a look at this and drop a line to the user in question? --InShaneee 22:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

  • He is wrong; that summary by you is well-written and earlier discussions point towards the same. This, incidentally, is a long-standing dispute between SimonP and Ril. Simon may be the more eloquent of the two, but he doesn't have consensus on his side. >Radiant< 23:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Prior to this there have been at least six separate general discussions, and thousands of words written, about whether Bible verses should be on Wikipedia:
Every one of these has either been ambiguous or decided that the verses should be kept. The reason this one came out differently is only because -Ril- skewed the process as much as he was able to. His actions were clearly designed to get the outcome he was interested in, not to gage community consensus. If you look at the what links here for the page you will see that it was spammed to only users -Ril- thought would agree with him. He only informed me about it when he felt it could be presented as a fait accompli. None of the other people who support these verses were informed, and not surprisingly not one of them commented. Not only that he had a highly POV call to arms, "help remove Biblecruft," in his signature for the entire period of the discussion. This was a crusade, not an attempt at consensus, and this can be clearly seen in how aberrant the results were from previous neutrally managed discussions such as Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses. - SimonP 00:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Straw man. Nobody is arguing that these verses should be deleted. Also, making an ad hominem on Ril doesn't make him wrong. Consensus strongly supports merging these, you seem to be the lone dissenter in almost all those discussions. >Radiant< 16:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Please look at the debates linked. In almost all of them dozens of other people have voted keep. In most of the deletion debates I was not even the primary person making the keep arguments. - SimonP 16:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, I have read them. Once more, this is a straw man. Nobody is arguing that these verses should be deleted. >Radiant< 16:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
        • But your then ignroing Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Individual Bible verses and Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses, both of which were quite explcitly about merging. - SimonP 16:37, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
          • Yes, and if you read what people say in those debates rather than making a blind vote count, you'll see that both quite explicitly support merging. >Radiant< 16:45, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
            • I think you might be reading your own POV into this issue. No one who attempted to summarize Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses felt there was anything close to a consensus to merge. - SimonP 16:57, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
              • That's simply false. Chris Parham concludes that articles on Bible verses should demonstrate the individual notability of the verse, Doc concludes that stubs and bare-bones may be merged. Also, nearly all of the "keep separate" section was written by you, with far more people contributing to the other sections. And still, one page that is apparently less clear does not in any way invalidate the strong consensus for merging shown on those other pages. >Radiant< 17:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
                • I think you are misunderstanding what these debates are bout. Absolutely no one disagrees with some mergers, for instance just yesterday I wrote Matthew 7:7-8 covering two verses. What has soundly been rejected time and again are mass mergers of almost every article. When given the chance, however, the community has not approved merging even the most stubby articles, consider Talk:Matthew 1:2, for instance. - SimonP 17:27, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • "The community has not approved"? You are the sole dissenter there. Sounds like a case of WP:OWNership to me. >Radiant< 01:55, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Please corect your comment. It was not I who reverted the merge at Talk:Matthew 1:2, it was another user entirely. I merely joined the discussion after it was already underway. - SimonP 05:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
      • That would be Dsmdgold, yes, but rather than having an opinion on the article, he seems to be arguing from a bureaucratic misunderstanding of AFD process, that a closing admin may not merge an article or that an AFD precludes future merging. >Radiant< 12:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
        • Yes, and I'm sure his keep vote in the VfD debate was simply another poorly expressed hope for a merger. I think you have to accept that not everyone agrees with you that adding content to Wikipedia is a bad thing. - SimonP 14:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
          • I do not object to adding content. I object to your resistance against organizing content. A merge is not a loss of information. >Radiant< 00:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
            • And I question why people who have no interest in the actual content, and in many cases have quite clearly not even read it, should be so concerned about how it is organized. - SimonP 01:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
              • Well, that would be one of the premises of Wikipedia. Large areas of Category:Wikipedia maintenance are dedicated to organizing content, regardless of what that content actually is. People routinely use the randompage button to find things to check, copyed, wikify, categorize, etc. >Radiant< 01:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
                • Yes, and while such work is laudable I also pretty routinely revert changes that are semingly obvious, well meaning, but also utterly wrong. For an example consider this unrelated posting I made to the Village Pump earlier today. - SimonP 01:54, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
                  • Except from what I've seen of your contributions, most of your reverts have been reverting against the consensus agreed by pretty much everyone but you. This strikes many people as a violation of WP:OWN. Thryduulf 11:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
                    • On 14 different discussions the result has been that there should be no mass deletion or merging of these articles. That this discussion went in the opposite direction only serves to prove how much -Ril- managed to skew it. - SimonP 14:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
  • You're confusing deletion with merging again. People oppose mass deletion. People like merging. Merging is not deletion. >Radiant< 14:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Except that for the last six months the debate has been about merging. Read the comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:2 (second attempt), and you'll find and the keep votes with comments are all explict that they are anti-merge votes. Even that extremly short article had anything but a consensus to merge it, so how can you argue that most people support merging the much longer ones? - SimonP 14:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Area codes

I'd like to close this (since there's only been one comment), but I'm a little hesitant since Uncle G linked to a talk page, where an actual debate seems to have taken place. Any thoughts? --InShaneee 04:42, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

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