User talk:Brews ohare/Dealing with minority views

Problems with the proposal

I see a number of issues with this proposal. I may extend this list as time allows.

• Encourages perpetual, low-level edit warring

  This proposal, as written, appears to endorse perpetual low-level edit warring in order to restrain the inappropriate addition of fringe viewpoints to articles. ("[The majority] can use the WP:3RR rule to permanently revert any Main page edits by the minority.")

  The only way to stop the ongoing edit warring is to conduct a bureaucratic poll.

• Presumed 'right of inclusion'

  The presumption of this document is always that the 'minority' (i.e. 'fringe') viewpoint is actually appropriate for the article, neglecting any reference to or understanding of WP:WEIGHT, WP:NOT, WP:NOR, WP:SYNTH, etc. If a proposed inclusion is rejected, there is no provision to say to fringe editors "enough, already". The onus is placed on holders of the majority, mainstream view to perform a detailed critique of all new proposals. The fringe editors are encouraged not to take no for an answer, but to simply reformulate their proposal for resubmission ad infinitum.

• Time sink for holders of minority views

  The process encourages holders of a minority viewpoint to waste their own time by expressly discouraging the contribution or involvement of 'majority' editors in the formulation or discussion of their proposals. This will lead to the disillusionment and frustration of naive minority editors who are suddenly shocked to discover that their smoothly-progressing proposal is actually widely objected to.

• Requirements imposed on the 'majority' are unreasonable

  The requirement for "careful Talk page explanation of the reasoning involved" with "guideline violations...to be explained in detail, referring carefully to exactly the wording or sources that are considered violations" for every single reverted edit is unreasonably onerous. Saying the same thing over and over again is a waste of time. "That explanation does not consist of dangling about WP:OR, WP:POV and other guideline acronyms..." — This appears to be an attempt to reactivate a resoundingly defeated policy proposal which Brews made a few weeks ago which aimed to bar all use of policy shortcuts in edit summaries as incivil.

On a related note, I drafted a never-quite finished essay in my userspace about a year ago, called The Policy Reform Treadmill, or Why the Cabal Killed Your Proposal. While it was mostly written with a recent spate of de-adminship process proposals in mind, there are distinct similarities with the present situation. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:02, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This proposed essay misstates and conflicts with existing policies and guidelines, and therefore cannot be published as an essay in project space. Consensus explicitly is not about majority rule, and the majority does not always get its way. 3RR explicitly is not a right. Wikipedia and its talk pages are not about the rights of majorities, minorities, or individuals. Wikipedia and its talk pages are about building an encyclopedia and building consensus as to its contents. This proposed essay reads like proposed rules for warfare. Wikipedia is not a battleground, and editors who try to make it into one have problems here. This proposed essay appears to be based on the unstated misconception that Wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and processes broke down in the Speed of light arbitration. It is understandable that editors who were sanctioned feel that way. Nevertheless, that case dealt appropriately with editors who were violating Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and thereby disrupting the project of writing an encyclopedia. —Finell (talk) 17:45, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

—Finell: I believe that battlegrounds do develop on Talk pages, and a problem exists. This essay is not a rehash of Speed of light arbitration, although the behavior on Talk: Speed of light certainly is an example of what can go wrong when tempers rise and matters go to arbitration.

It is evident that an essay is a suggestion as to actions that might mitigate or avoid a mêlée. Perhaps you have some suggestions of your own that might do this? It doesn't help to say such problems don't arise: they do. Brews ohare (talk) 17:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Count Iblis

I think this is a very good essay. Some comments. Reading Ten's comment about low level edit warring above, I think you could simply reverse the argument and say that for the minority to add some text in an artiucle against the will of the majority would necessarily lead to edit warring and lead to Adminstrative intervention. If you put it this way then the text doesn't encourage any edit warring anymore.

I think you also need to write up your essay such that it is clear that Finell's objections are not justified. You could make the introduction larger and explain there that while Wikipedia should not be a battlefield, there are sectors in Wikipedia where there are tensions and a Minority/minority split unfortunately does exists.

You write about the majority prerogatives in point 1 that:

"That explanation does not consist of dangling about WP:OR, WP:POV and other guideline acronyms as though they are self-explanatory."

I think you should add WP:RS here, as that is very often invoked on politcs pages. In the science articles it is very often not an issue because we have very clear cut boundaries between reliable peer reviewed sources and everything else that is non-peer reviewed. On politics pages, WP:RS is often a huge issue.

Example. A long time ago when I was editing the Hamas page, there was a dispute about a sentence saying that "Hamas is best known for conducting suicide bombings" I wanted to change that into someting that would be less contentious. The contentious element here is the "best known" part of the statement. But because a reliable source said this, the people in favor of keeping that sentence could not be conviced.

My compromize proposal was to simply say that: "Hamas is responsible for suicide bombings" or something similar, and then giving the citations for that. The problem with "best known" is of course, that the source that says this is simply giving the opinion of the author who looks at this issue from a certain perspective. It was not based on some poll. But I could not get that argument through because that was OR.

You write about the involvement of the majority in discusssions among the minority:

"The majority should refrain from participating in these threads except to assist the minority in meeting the majority objections. Catcalls, snowballing, bandwagonning, sneers, red herrings and other disruptions to the minority threads are violations of WP:Civil."

It may be better to be a priori more positive toward any engagement by the majority in these discussion. So, you could say that constructive criticism is ok., before saying what they should not do. Also, note that very often a "red herring" is a well meant example that can be shown to be irrelevant. Count Iblis (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)