G'day all! I'll answer the first questions before they are even asked: Is this a proposed policy? That's not what it says. When was it discussed?
The policy section is what is happening now. It's nothing new. It's been discussed at great length, and this is the result. If you want to mark the policy as draft or something, fine, I considered that strongly. But IMO it will achieve nothing. Having said that, if you do mark it draft or proposal, let's also have some idea of how and when you envisage having it adopted. And meanwhile I guess we'll still follow it as a de facto policy. Do you see my point? Andrewa 01:38, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is no consensus for it, so it is not a policy, de facto or otherwise. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. The way to test for consensus is to hold a vote. As I've said below, "consensus" (sometimes as low as ~70%, which I don't consider consensus at all) for individual articles time and again is not consensus for the general policy. The number of people voting on those individual articles, many of which were extremely POV and contained numerous non-verifiable facts, was extremely low compared to the number of people on Wikipedia, and in the vast majority of cases there was significant descent. You're right, consensus isn't exactly unanimity, but it's pretty close. There certainly needs to be a meaningful attempt at reaching unanimity. Consensus certainly doesn't mean that everyone gets their number one choice of a solution. That's impossible. But there hasn't even been an attempt to reach consensus on this issue.
Voting is not the way to reach consensus, however, if this policy received and maintained 80% or greater support I would abide by it. The question would be "Do you support this policy, as stated on (give date here and link to policy as of that date)?" Answers would be "Yes", "No", and "Support with changes". Deadline should be at least a week after it is listed on current polls. And there should be at least 5 days before the poll begins to present arguments in a consise form. During these 5 days the policy can be tweaked to put into the form it will be as of the poll.
Don't forget that not everything on Wikipedia requires consensus. With such a large community, it would be impossible. But policies, pretty much by their very nature, do require consensus, and that really means something rather similar to unanimity in that context. Everyone in the community should be willing to accept every policy of the community. If one doesn't support a policy, she shouldn't be part of the community.
Perhaps we need Wikipedia:Consensus, but I'm afraid the ideas of too many differ too greatly to reach consensus on what consensus means, and how it should be applied. Perhaps we should just admit that we're not a consensus-based community any more. I say this from the point of view that consensus means essentially unanimity. See http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/Consensus.html for a description of consensus which is in-line with my concept of it. It just happened to be the first hit on google when I searched for "consensus decision", so it isn't by any means what I would consider a perfect description of it.
I've had a go at a suitable notice, to try to avoid claiming that this is agreed policy without destroying the effectiveness of the page and risking having it become a(nother) discussion page on the subject that will become useful when pigs fly. Comments? Andrewa 20:27, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Note: This page describes the current practice. At some stage it will become agreed policy, and this notice can then be removed.
At some stage it will, huh? Is this just a natural progression from point A to point B, allowing nothing to interfere? Everyking 20:46, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The process will be improved in several ways. Here are some of them.
Firstly, people will not need to relist arguments for deletion every time there's a vote, as these are already listed in the archives section of the policy page. Someone might one day refactor them, but I don't see any immediate need for this. Newcomers will be able to see the arguments, and not need to reinvent them, old timers will know they are there and not even need to look at them, just a link will do.
Secondly, perhaps in time you will also get sick of relisting the same old rejected arguments every discussion. We can't force you to do this, but at least you will have the opportunity. This is a similar logic to not feeding the trolls. I don't suggest that you are trolling, but IMO it's a sort of sub-trolling to ignore the consensus the way you do. It sometimes seems as though you are quite deliberately wasting our time, just because you do not agree with the consensus. I doubt I am the only one who feels this.
Thirdly, even if you don't ever give up, the pattern of your behaviour will be even more obvious, and people will be better able to allow for it. Because the impact of this behaviour will be reduced, so will the annoyance factor, and there's more chance of avoiding anger on both sides, and of keeping you as a valued contributor.
I can see it's not easy. You may eventually need to take a holiday to consider your position, but I'm very hopeful you will be back.
Fourthly, discussion here on this talk page may result in a win for you, and the change of policy you want. I don't think it will happen, personally, but also I think there's a lot more chance of it happening here than on VfD. On VfD we are just frozen into prepared positions. That's not good.
I have no intention of lecturing you on VfD, just the opposite. This page will remove any need for that IMO.
Feel free to air the arguments for your proposed altenative policy on this talk page, however many times you may have put them before in other places. This, not VfD, is the place for them. I've made a start below. You can refer to the archives of closed discussions on the policy page, and/or use the links below to find the open discussions now on VfD. Andrewa 22:41, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Copied from my talk page, discussing a different policy but IMO very relevant to this one Andrewa 22:02, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC):
Wikipedia policies become more "official" as people agree with them, link to them and call them policy, and less official as people disagree with them, and edit them to insert "not policy" qualifiers. There's no hard-and-fast seperation. Martin 13:04, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Copied from discussion of the process of adoption of the policy above (resetting the indenting and snipping):
Well, I will gladly accept and support a policy that states that NPOV, verifiable information on 9/11 victims has a place on Wikipedia. <snip> Everyking 16:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Copied from discussion of the process of adoption of the policy above (resetting the indenting and snipping):
<snip> My point was that moving NPOV material to a tribute site is a poor tradeoff. People who want info on 9/11 victims will naturally look here; I suspect few except active Wikipedians are aware of the sep11 wiki. Moreover, people who want an objective biography may not be pleased with the standards of a tribute site. By including the information here, we commit ourselves to providing proper information on these victims, and leave the sep11 wiki for its intended purpose: tributes, personal experiences, etc. Everyking 04:50, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Yes. Fair enough.
It seems to me that the only thing on which we disagree is where to put factual information about people whose only claim to fame is that they are on the list of 9/11 victims. And, perhaps we need to agree to disagree on this. You haven't responded to my claim that there is consensus (as Wikipedia defines it) supporting my view.
My suggestion would be that you get involved in the Wiki Memorial yourself. (I assume you're not currently registered there, if so it's under a different name.) You obviously have a passion for making this information available and accurate, and the welcome mat is out for it in the memorial. If the standards or commitment or whatever of that site need raising in order to do this properly, then the way to do that is as a contributor. As to your earlier argument that the memorial is not well known, obviously you aren't going to promote it until it's fixed to your satisfaction.
The Wikipedia list of victims has an interwiki link to the list in the memorial site, so anyone who searches Wikipedia for a victim name will get to this link. I don't think the memorial site is all that hard to find myself, but if it is, that can and should be fixed. Andrewa 22:20, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The problem with the memorial site is that it is riddled with POV tributes which get in the way of reading the NPOV factual infomation. Yes, the NPOV information is still there, and it can still be found, it's just harder to find in the format of the memorial site. I believe this is what Everyking was trying to say, and it's certainly my main objection to moving everything to the memorial site. anthony (see warning)
The memorial wiki is an entirely separate project from Wikipedia. What is done there has no bearing on what should be done here. Wikipedia is supposed to be a complete and self-contained encyclopaedia; we should not delete articles from here just because there are articles on the same subject in a different project. -- Oliver P. 19:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The proposed policy page seemed to imply that some people wanted special treatment for 9/11 victims. As far as I am aware, this is not true. I think that maybe the common perception that it is true is the source of most of the disagreement. I have rewritten the page to say this. -- Oliver P. 19:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Christopher Zarba - see Template:VfD-Christopher Zarba - delisted but not deleted, comment is (= Christopher_Zarba= rm, listed for transwikifaction), vote is 7/3 = exactly 70% in favour of deletion
Jonas Martin Panik Georgine Rose Corrigan Deborah Jacobs Welsh - see Template:VfD-911victims
Barbara G. Edwards - see Template:VfD-Barbara Edwards
Darlene Flagg - see Template:VfD-Darlene Flagg
(this list may not always be up to date, check VfD itself to be safe)
G'day all! I'll answer the first questions before they are even asked: Is this a proposed policy? That's not what it says. When was it discussed?
The policy section is what is happening now. It's nothing new. It's been discussed at great length, and this is the result. If you want to mark the policy as draft or something, fine, I considered that strongly. But IMO it will achieve nothing. Having said that, if you do mark it draft or proposal, let's also have some idea of how and when you envisage having it adopted. And meanwhile I guess we'll still follow it as a de facto policy. Do you see my point? Andrewa 01:38, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is no consensus for it, so it is not a policy, de facto or otherwise. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. The way to test for consensus is to hold a vote. As I've said below, "consensus" (sometimes as low as ~70%, which I don't consider consensus at all) for individual articles time and again is not consensus for the general policy. The number of people voting on those individual articles, many of which were extremely POV and contained numerous non-verifiable facts, was extremely low compared to the number of people on Wikipedia, and in the vast majority of cases there was significant descent. You're right, consensus isn't exactly unanimity, but it's pretty close. There certainly needs to be a meaningful attempt at reaching unanimity. Consensus certainly doesn't mean that everyone gets their number one choice of a solution. That's impossible. But there hasn't even been an attempt to reach consensus on this issue.
Voting is not the way to reach consensus, however, if this policy received and maintained 80% or greater support I would abide by it. The question would be "Do you support this policy, as stated on (give date here and link to policy as of that date)?" Answers would be "Yes", "No", and "Support with changes". Deadline should be at least a week after it is listed on current polls. And there should be at least 5 days before the poll begins to present arguments in a consise form. During these 5 days the policy can be tweaked to put into the form it will be as of the poll.
Don't forget that not everything on Wikipedia requires consensus. With such a large community, it would be impossible. But policies, pretty much by their very nature, do require consensus, and that really means something rather similar to unanimity in that context. Everyone in the community should be willing to accept every policy of the community. If one doesn't support a policy, she shouldn't be part of the community.
Perhaps we need Wikipedia:Consensus, but I'm afraid the ideas of too many differ too greatly to reach consensus on what consensus means, and how it should be applied. Perhaps we should just admit that we're not a consensus-based community any more. I say this from the point of view that consensus means essentially unanimity. See http://www.actupny.org/documents/CDdocuments/Consensus.html for a description of consensus which is in-line with my concept of it. It just happened to be the first hit on google when I searched for "consensus decision", so it isn't by any means what I would consider a perfect description of it.
I've had a go at a suitable notice, to try to avoid claiming that this is agreed policy without destroying the effectiveness of the page and risking having it become a(nother) discussion page on the subject that will become useful when pigs fly. Comments? Andrewa 20:27, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Note: This page describes the current practice. At some stage it will become agreed policy, and this notice can then be removed.
At some stage it will, huh? Is this just a natural progression from point A to point B, allowing nothing to interfere? Everyking 20:46, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The process will be improved in several ways. Here are some of them.
Firstly, people will not need to relist arguments for deletion every time there's a vote, as these are already listed in the archives section of the policy page. Someone might one day refactor them, but I don't see any immediate need for this. Newcomers will be able to see the arguments, and not need to reinvent them, old timers will know they are there and not even need to look at them, just a link will do.
Secondly, perhaps in time you will also get sick of relisting the same old rejected arguments every discussion. We can't force you to do this, but at least you will have the opportunity. This is a similar logic to not feeding the trolls. I don't suggest that you are trolling, but IMO it's a sort of sub-trolling to ignore the consensus the way you do. It sometimes seems as though you are quite deliberately wasting our time, just because you do not agree with the consensus. I doubt I am the only one who feels this.
Thirdly, even if you don't ever give up, the pattern of your behaviour will be even more obvious, and people will be better able to allow for it. Because the impact of this behaviour will be reduced, so will the annoyance factor, and there's more chance of avoiding anger on both sides, and of keeping you as a valued contributor.
I can see it's not easy. You may eventually need to take a holiday to consider your position, but I'm very hopeful you will be back.
Fourthly, discussion here on this talk page may result in a win for you, and the change of policy you want. I don't think it will happen, personally, but also I think there's a lot more chance of it happening here than on VfD. On VfD we are just frozen into prepared positions. That's not good.
I have no intention of lecturing you on VfD, just the opposite. This page will remove any need for that IMO.
Feel free to air the arguments for your proposed altenative policy on this talk page, however many times you may have put them before in other places. This, not VfD, is the place for them. I've made a start below. You can refer to the archives of closed discussions on the policy page, and/or use the links below to find the open discussions now on VfD. Andrewa 22:41, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Copied from my talk page, discussing a different policy but IMO very relevant to this one Andrewa 22:02, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC):
Wikipedia policies become more "official" as people agree with them, link to them and call them policy, and less official as people disagree with them, and edit them to insert "not policy" qualifiers. There's no hard-and-fast seperation. Martin 13:04, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Copied from discussion of the process of adoption of the policy above (resetting the indenting and snipping):
Well, I will gladly accept and support a policy that states that NPOV, verifiable information on 9/11 victims has a place on Wikipedia. <snip> Everyking 16:01, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Copied from discussion of the process of adoption of the policy above (resetting the indenting and snipping):
<snip> My point was that moving NPOV material to a tribute site is a poor tradeoff. People who want info on 9/11 victims will naturally look here; I suspect few except active Wikipedians are aware of the sep11 wiki. Moreover, people who want an objective biography may not be pleased with the standards of a tribute site. By including the information here, we commit ourselves to providing proper information on these victims, and leave the sep11 wiki for its intended purpose: tributes, personal experiences, etc. Everyking 04:50, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
New discussion:
Yes. Fair enough.
It seems to me that the only thing on which we disagree is where to put factual information about people whose only claim to fame is that they are on the list of 9/11 victims. And, perhaps we need to agree to disagree on this. You haven't responded to my claim that there is consensus (as Wikipedia defines it) supporting my view.
My suggestion would be that you get involved in the Wiki Memorial yourself. (I assume you're not currently registered there, if so it's under a different name.) You obviously have a passion for making this information available and accurate, and the welcome mat is out for it in the memorial. If the standards or commitment or whatever of that site need raising in order to do this properly, then the way to do that is as a contributor. As to your earlier argument that the memorial is not well known, obviously you aren't going to promote it until it's fixed to your satisfaction.
The Wikipedia list of victims has an interwiki link to the list in the memorial site, so anyone who searches Wikipedia for a victim name will get to this link. I don't think the memorial site is all that hard to find myself, but if it is, that can and should be fixed. Andrewa 22:20, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The problem with the memorial site is that it is riddled with POV tributes which get in the way of reading the NPOV factual infomation. Yes, the NPOV information is still there, and it can still be found, it's just harder to find in the format of the memorial site. I believe this is what Everyking was trying to say, and it's certainly my main objection to moving everything to the memorial site. anthony (see warning)
The memorial wiki is an entirely separate project from Wikipedia. What is done there has no bearing on what should be done here. Wikipedia is supposed to be a complete and self-contained encyclopaedia; we should not delete articles from here just because there are articles on the same subject in a different project. -- Oliver P. 19:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
The proposed policy page seemed to imply that some people wanted special treatment for 9/11 victims. As far as I am aware, this is not true. I think that maybe the common perception that it is true is the source of most of the disagreement. I have rewritten the page to say this. -- Oliver P. 19:26, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Christopher Zarba - see Template:VfD-Christopher Zarba - delisted but not deleted, comment is (= Christopher_Zarba= rm, listed for transwikifaction), vote is 7/3 = exactly 70% in favour of deletion
Jonas Martin Panik Georgine Rose Corrigan Deborah Jacobs Welsh - see Template:VfD-911victims
Barbara G. Edwards - see Template:VfD-Barbara Edwards
Darlene Flagg - see Template:VfD-Darlene Flagg
(this list may not always be up to date, check VfD itself to be safe)