Wikipedia talk:Discuss, don't vote/Archive2

message: An alternative to this proposal can be found at Wikipedia:Discuss and Vote. Comments welcome. --Blue Tie 18:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Er. It puts heavy emphasis on ratifying policy and guidelines by votes. I'm not saying that you're wrong to propose that, but I have to advise you that it hasn't got a snowball's chance of being accepted. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe so.  Don't know why people would want it otherwise, but if that is how the majority want it, so be it. However, I am also still working on it.  --Blue Tie 12:50, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternative Version

message: Regardless of whether any one editor thinks this accurately describes the status quo, as far as I can tell this has never gone through a proposal, never been advertised as being under debate at the Village Pump, and is obviously not the subject of wide consensus. Nobody has yet proposed that it be given the official status of a guideline (and I'm not counting self-endowed fiat).
The general idea of "voting is evil" has pretty wide acceptance, but turning an essay (from meta, no less) into a guideline requires a structured process that ensures that not only do editors from all over Wikipedia have the chance to weigh in, but also that the content of the proposed guideline be hammered into the most acceptable shape. This simply hasn't happened.
If I sound a bit incredulous, it's because I am. I know that Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy, but it's also not an anarchy. Elevating an essay to guideline status by fiat just isn't done. That it has wide acceptance does not justify eliminating all best practices. This is very well-meaning, but misguided. If there's such wide acceptance, then we must verify that consensus rather than relying on one fallible editor's appraisal of the consensus.
If I haven't made it clear, I don't actually oppose this becoming a guideline. I do oppose in the strongest possible way this becoming a guideline without a high-profile process and without  the scrutiny of the text of the essay that would come with a high-profile discussion. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the..? This isn't a guideline 

message: This page appears to be m:Polls are Evil with only minor cosmetic changes. Essays can't be converted to guidelines effectively by simply changing the tag at the top from  to . For those who agree, skip to the bottom. For those unconvinced by that, keep with me a little.
An essay is argumentative in tone and purpose: it tries to lay out a point of view (I'm not invoking NPOV, don't worry) and it argues for the reader to adopt a particular perspective on an issue. A good example is Wikipedia:No angry mastodons: it provides words of wisdom and a rationale for seeing the world in the way it recommends. By contrast, a guideline lays out, literally, guidelines with only enough rationale to give the guideline context. It doesn't argue for the reader adopting the perspective, but rather explains why it's done this way. A good example of this is Wikipedia:External links: it makes very minimal reference to why it is telling the reader what to do and is primarily a set of instructions.
Right now Discuss, don't vote is more akin to No angry mastodons than it is to the External links guideline. It has a single instruction: don't vote on everything and try not to vote at all. This is placed in such a way that it is not the subject of the page, but rather the preamble that introduces the meat: why voting is a bad idea. This is fine for an essay, and is in fact a valuable thing. My argument is that it is ineffectual for a guideline.
The focus of the discussion above seems to be entirely on whether the community's views on and treatment of voting should be made into a guideline. Making a guideline is more than deciding whether a community practice or process should be distilled into a guideline, though, it is also about making that guideline useful beyond philosophical edification. So I have a two-part proposal.
(Skip to here for the proposal.) firstly, this page ought to be rewritten with an eye to concrete (though necessarily loose) instructions that can be implemented by anyone. Rules like (off the top of my head):
*Use polls to discover the current consensus, not to establish it
*Polls are non-binding
*Use polls sparingly as they can be divisive
...and so on should appear on this page. Essentially, it should say what it currenlty does but in the appropriate form, with a different tone, and in an unambiguous way.
Secondly, Wikipedia:Voting is evil should be a separate page that contains the essay. They should refer to each other (VIE should have DDV prominently linked at the top for all those citing it rather than the new guideline; DDV should have VIE in the See also section, and probably mention it somewhere else as its inspiration), but they should be distinct. One expresses a principle that is important and widely accepted, the other should be a clear presentation of the established best practices that can be easily cited, understood, and implemented.
Wikipedia:No angry mastodons is again a good example of the difference. It contains many instructions, but none of which are actionable: it has instructions for the reader about their own behaviour and thoughts, but none that can be applied outside the reader. It is instructive, but its instructions are not "law-like" in that they are mearly a how-to guide for the philosophy it expresses. DDV must have instructions that are actionable within the encyclopedia: what may and may not be done here, as opposed to within oneself.
Some discussion about how best to translate the spirit of Polls are Evil and the established practices around polls into a guides is called for. I think this will make DDV a stronger and more useful page. Essentially, marking this essay as a guideline will not increase its utility at all to the project and be merely a symbolic act. However, we don't need such verbose symbols. Let's make it useful, shall we? — Saxifrage ✎ 02:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is still an essay – let's fix that 

message: I'm not really interested in debating semantics of what a vote is, if making a vote is different from voting, yadda yadda yadda. To me it seems like this is a page that was written as an essay, a guideline tag has been slapped on it, and what that all means is totally unclear. 98% of RfAs are closed based just on the numbers, do we need to close down RfA because it's clearly in violation of this guideline? Do we need to block users who claim to be voting, since voting is against policy? Although it will probably be a painful process, if this page is going to mean anything, it needs to be rewritten into an actual actionable guideline, not an essay on concepts important to Wikipedia, so it's clear what we're actually supposed to do with it. 
My suggest for the spirit of this page: The numbers in any poll are important as they closely reflect what raw consensus is, but they can just be wrong sometimes, due to anything from small a sample size to mob mentality to outright manipulation. The spirit of Wikipedia has always been to do what is best, not what a given mob wants, so administrators and b'crats have traditionally been given leeway in making decisions that they feel benefit the project, otherwise RfA and XfDs would just be closed by bot. To see any process as purely a vote in the conventional sense of the word, where if you get enough voters on one side you automatically get your way, that's simply false and not helpful to Wikipedia. Policies, polls and processes should be written, if at all possible, to avoid situations where a decision-makers hands would be effectively tied to the result of a vote. It should be understood that a simple up/down count is often performed, but unlike in a conventional vote, stating the reason you opposed or support a motion is important, and might even be required. 
Anyway, that's where I stand on all of this. The "guideline" needs to be rewritten before it can mean much. Am I totally on another planet here? --W.marsh 13:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you.  I also think you said it well. --Blue Tie 14:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Well stated. I said pretty much the same thing in a section above, but much less concisely than you have. — Saxifrage ✎ 02:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

text: The problem is that this guideline doesn't mention any of that, actually it sort of did but it was removed. Right now all you could infer from it is that we don't vote at all, or do anything resembling voting, which is untrue. --W.marsh 14:42, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I was thinking of doing something like that, and at a glance your edit looks good. I think we're moving in the right direction. I think it probably should mention that the dramatic majority of AfDs and RfAs are closed in a way that correlates directly to the numbers. For me and others, it seems like it's hard to swallow these kind of arguments when processes are so blatently vote-like, and the argument seems to say that the numbers don't matter, when they obviously do. But ultimately I understand (and act on) the concept that the raw count doesn't always determine what must be done, it's just a useful indication of consensus, which is usually right, but not a suicide pact by any means. --W.marsh 15:36, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *I agree that most AFDs (et al) are (and should be) closed according to the "obvious majority"; indeed, any closer is supposed to follow consensus. However, an important goal of this page is to counter the frequent belief among novice users that it's only about counting numbers - some people go "support ~~~~" to spread quick votes, without realizing that that's not really helpful; or complain when something is not strictly done by the percentages (common on WP:DRV); or say "I move that we do so-and-so, all in favor say aye?"  Education of novice users is always useful. >Radiant< 15:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'm not sure it needs to be a guideline if the purpose is just education. But anyway, my point is that many people just are naturally frustrated when so many people say "RfA/AfD is not even vote-like" when it blatently is. Maybe we need to educate more than just the newbies :-) --W.marsh 15:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: **I'm afraid it does, because given the overdose of pages in Wikispace, novice users are disinclined to believe (or sometimes, read) any page that's not a guideline or policy. Personally I consider RFA a vote, and I believe AFD should have been setup to appear less like a structured yes/no vote, although it's too late to change it now. >Radiant< 16:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: ***There was an AfD a while back where we had a really fine, interesting debate going where several people changed their minds, then someone uninvolved came along and decided the discussion was distracting and moved it all to the talk page... leaving just the "votes" with no explanation of how we'd gotten there. I wish I remembered which AfD exactly (some tiny German island), but it was an interesting look at the vote mentality... more specifically that the arguments are nice but they're really just window dressing, which is totally wrong. If someone could distill our understanding of "We look like we're voting but we aren't really, there's correlation but not causation at AfD in RfA, and if you think you're actually voting, you still have a lot to learn, kid" into a coherent paragraph, well, that person would win. This is just general rambling, sorry... I'm not expecting you to magically write the perfect paragraph or anything. --W.marsh 16:15, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that we are indeed voting.  And that there is a definite correlation of cause and effect.  However, the problem you mention in one word "Mentality" is something to avoid.  There should not be a "rush to resolve by vote" but rather a patience to resolve with votes used as part of the process which relies upon communication and persuasive discussion. A vote, by itself does not show consensus simply because there has been no discussion and consideration of the issue.  However, a discussion also does not show consensus by itself either.--Blue Tie 16:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: You are right in your looking for a rational explanation for this policy text and finding that there is none.  The text of this WP:DDV is an outright denial of reality.  Let us take first the quirky hypothesis: "Polling discourages consensus."  If you will, please let me give you a counterexample that proves that quirky hypothesis wrong.  In the data under this link, you can see the day-by-day detailed historical data in which pollings were crucial tools for 1) measuring consensus and 2) determining the issues that had to be resolved to reach the next level of consensus among editors.  Not even once in that empirical data from a hot and tough work session extended over a period of three months did a polling discourage consensus.  And in that statement I have given you a falsifiable hypothesis on that empirical data.  So how do we rewrite the text of the WP:DDV page to remove the serious and blatant denials of reality throughout this page?  --Rednblu 18:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no less than 3 huge projects to wrap up today.  So I may not get to this right away.  Not only that but my thoughts in this area are evolving.  I am gathering ideas and information.  I already have some ideas.  I don't really like my ideas 100% but if I toss them out there they may be improvable. --Blue Tie 20:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've been thinking about this recently. Being on-and-off active at AfD, I have a hard time saying things like "changing my ??? to neutral per So-and-so" there without using the word vote for the ???. There just isn't another word that works that I've found. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:27, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "position"?  Or "stance"?  -- Visviva 00:55, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "vote"?  ;)  —David Levy 02:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. As a student of semantics, syntax, etc., "opinion", "stance", and "position" are unsatisfying—they don't actually fill that slot grammatically. None of those things have the right relation to me, either. I can say "I retract my keep vote" but I can't say "I retract my keep stance". It just doesn't substitute. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: The opinions in questions are correctly referred to as "votes."  Only in a particular colloquial (and incorrect) connotation does the word "vote" refer strictly to majority voting.  —David Levy 02:39, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Its been 22 years since 1984.  Time to get on board with Newspeak. --Blue Tie 03:56, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  So, what does this mean? 

message: The Wikipedia:Disruptive editing guideline says:
:"Disruptive editors may seek to disguise their behavior as productive editing, yet distinctive traits separate them from productive editors. When discussion fails to resolve the problem and when an impartial consensus of editors from outside a disputed page agree (through requests for comment or similar means), further disruption should be liable to blocking at the administrators' noticeboard and may lead to more serious disciplinary action through the dispute resolution process. In extreme cases this could include a site ban, either though the arbitration committee or by administrator consensus." WAS 4.250 15:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia:Disruptive editing

message: I don't think that anyone has mentioned that we actually have a policy on this, WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a Democracy. I don't know why I didn't think to bring this up before. Radiant asked what does one do when someone says "oh, I shouldn't have to follow that, it's an essay!" Well, heck, I recall a lot of times when people just cited "Wikipedia is not a Democracy" directly and pretty much was the "force" that was needed in those situations. The policy says:
Isn't that exactly what we all agree upon? We have the policy there, the "authority", that we can use to point people to. Then we have the meta essays which discuss some of the pros and cons of voting and polling and where they should and shouldn't be used. I go back to my original point that this proposed guideline is instructions creep on our already existing policy and the meta essays. There's no need to make a guideline to strengthen a position that is backed up by policy. -- Ned Scott 20:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I'd always thought the spirit of WP:IAR explains why we avoid majority votes and binding polls. Their outcomes could and occasionally do suggest a course of action we feel would lower the quality of the project, so it's always been seen as important to not tie decision-makers hands to the results of some poll somewhere. No one should be doing things they believe deep down hurt the project. --W.marsh 20:39, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like that both points are brought up.  However, I think that WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a Democracy is both right and wrong.  It sets up a concept of "vote vs discussion" which I believe is bad.  I believe that the concept should be something along the lines of WP:BRD but when things involve many editors and particularly with regard to policy and matters not subject to "fact checking" but rather with judgment, discussion can reasonably and profitably be followed by and preceded with a poll.  In other words, discussion may reasonably include polling and it is not a "vote vs discussion" or a "voting is evil" or "voting is right" or even "voting = discussion" but rather that voting is a tool, neither preferred nor subverted to other tools with consensus being the goal.  The vote is not the goal but a tool.  Majorities do not necessarily "win", particularly in the case of issues that are easily resolved through fact checking/verification.    However, that does not apply to guidelines and policies and in those cases a position really should clearly dominate before it can be called a "guideline" or "policy". (Unless it is directed from above by the Foundation (which may have necessary legal requirements and constraints) or by some other body appointed to that task.) I could even see where something might NOT be a policy even if it does dominate, but I have a hard time seeing something as a policy without dominance.  (Note, I refrain from declaring what "dominate" means at this time -- that is a secondary discussion.)  --Blue Tie 20:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy, Wikipedia is not a Democracy 

message: :::Actually, my reading of the original Voting is Evil is that the title is hyperbole, and that it does acknowledge that votes are valuable tools. I don't think anyone is arguing that they're not, though sometimes I am unclear about Radiant's stance when he starts equating running polls with disruptive behaviour. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:41, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *VIE is tongue-in-cheek, yes (most old "rules-like" pages are, including IAR). I do not equate polls with disruption; I simply tend to close them down iff they wouldn't be helpful. >Radiant< 21:44, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *:I don't think that's a wise course of action, nor an undisruptive one. Polls aren't binding, so such action is unnecessary. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *:*The intent is not to stop the poll; the intent is to divert people's energy into more useful directions, such as creating a compromise. It is not something I do blindly, but it is something that has been known to work quite well in several (but not all) cases. One problem is that people do tend to think of polls as binding, even if they aren't meant to be ("the poll wasn't binding, but majority says foo, so let's do foo"). Another problem is that some polls are divisive because of being worded badly. Sometimes polls work fine, too. >Radiant< 21:59, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *:*:This is off topic and, personally, disquieting. If you wish to discuss this, let's use our talk pages. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hyperbole

message: We have employed voting to resolve contentious issues of Wikipedia policy.  For a few examples, see Wikipedia:Arbitration policy ratification vote, Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/G4, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/1, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/10, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/11, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/13, and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal/Blatant copyvio material.  The Requests for adminship process is effectively a vote in most cases, because it is extraordinarily rare for an RFA to succeed with the support of less than 75% of the established users who comment on it.  Carnildo's recent RFA attracted significant controversy precisely because its outcome was an exception to the usual practice.  The claim that voting is strongly disfavored on Wikipedia simply does not comport with current practices.  Thus, this essay should not be guideline. John254 22:22, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Very well said. In fact, that's exactly what I've been saying. This being a guidline goes against the practices of many Wikipedians and Administrators, thus it should be kept as an essay, regardless of wether or not Radiant! wants people to read it.--KojiDude (Contributions) 22:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there a consensus that it is a textbook example of how not to hold a vote or are you declaring that there is actually a  verifiable source that declares that this procedure was simply wrong?  --Blue Tie 22:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *Check the history. The textbook error lies in leaving the vote open forever, which has led to people believing they could "halt" the arbitration committee a year later by gathering a bunch of people to vote against it. Needless to say that didn't work, but it did cause an unnecessary mess that way. >Radiant< 22:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Checking the history, I see that the vote was held open 1 week, not forever.  It was not protected though.  Is that what you mean?  That vote pages should be protected?--Blue Tie 23:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *. "This is a rolling vote, which means that further votes and expressions of support or opposition are very welcome". That is the problem. It was solved several months ago, though. >Radiant< 09:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First you say we don't vote at all and never have voted, then you say we vote very rarley, and now you say we only voted a year ago. You know what I think? I think you're making this shit up as you go along, and you're desperatly trying to defend the article because of a WP:OWN issue. We vote frequently on Wikipedia. Straw Polls are used thousands of times a day. We vote in AfDs. We vote in the Board of Trustees Elections. We vote for the ArbCom thing. Saying voting is discouraged or against the rules is saying that all of the people participating in the things listed above are breaking the rules, and should be blocked. That is what this "guidline" says. Nothing you say or do can change the fact that we do vote on Wikipedia, and very often at that. We vote, and discuss each others opinions.--KojiDude (Contributions) 23:24, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Voting is current practice to my knowledge—check out Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Sidebar redesign/Final draft vote for a recent example.  In fact, I am in the process of writing a script to help with the approval voting process; if voting were not current practice I wouldn't bother devoting my time to coding it. --DavidHOzAu 23:54, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

text: *Yes, we do vote on standards. I had added a section on that several weeks ago. >Radiant< 09:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yet the RfA policy actually calls it a vote. So they were in error--Blue Tie 17:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: We have frequently used voting to resolve contentious issues

message: The statement that "We have historically voted on a select few policies (WP:3RR, WP:ArbCom and the older parts of WP:CSD)" is unverifiable. We have a relatively large number of policies, and it would require weeks of research to carefully read through all of the talk page archives for every single policy to determine if they contain or link to additional votes which have been used to determine policy.  The claim that "No guideline was ever enacted through a vote." is unverifiable for a similar reason.
Moreover, the assertion that "We have historically voted on a select few policies (WP:3RR, WP:ArbCom and the older parts of WP:CSD)", even if true, is misleading.  Many non-contentious policy enactments and amendments have been effectuated without voting; consequently, the relatively small percentage of Wikipedia's total policy that has been created as a result of voting is unrepresentative of the extent to which voting has been used to resolve contentious policy matters.
The statement that "In all other cases, policy was decided through discussion." is factually incorrect.  This certainly is not an example of deciding policy through discussion.  Indeed, the persistent inability of discussion to resolve policy disputes practically necessitates the intervention of the Wikimedia Foundation or the Arbitration Committee to avoid massive edit warring on policy pages -- such as that seen on WP:DDV and WP:CHILD -- when there is strong resistance to resolving policy disputes by voting.  Perhaps most instructive is the fact that the Arbitration Committee itself uses voting as an internal decision-making mechanism to avoid the gridlock that might ensue if it relied entirely on "discussion-based" consensus.
The assertion that "if a proposal is controversial, doing a headcount to see where the majority lies will not resolve the controversy, and may polarize it further. Controversy may spill onto the poll itself, causing debate on its mechanics." is inconsistent with Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus_vs._supermajority, which states that supermajority support for a proposal can indicate consensus.  Polling is particularly useful when an extremely small but vocal minority is creating the appearance of a dispute in discussions; under such circumstances, polling may be valuable to illustrate the outcome that most established users favor. John254 04:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Just a few of the problems with [[Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote/Draft]]

message: I think that voting is evil is somewhat outdated.  I agree that voting is a distant second best to true consensus, but it seems to me that a lot of disputes are resolved by something worse than both consensus and voting, a sort of Darwinian struggle.
*True consensus: This is obviously the best case.  As I understand WP:CONSENSUS, however, true consensus means you keep chewing on the problem until everyone, or very nearly everyone, agrees.
*Darwinian "consensus":  Lately, it seems to me that when someone declares consensus, they mean that they (1) are in the apparent majority, (2) have declared "we have consensus" and (3) willing to edit war to get what they want.  (Of course, because they have "consensus", they aren't edit warring, just the minority editors).  A vote is inconvenient in these cases not because it polarizes opinion, but because it records the absense of consensus.
On the other hand, I feel strongly that a lot of "outside opinion" procedures such as RFC's are essentially more like polling than they are not.  Rarely, an RFC can convince someone in a dispute that they are mistaken about a core point, by citing to a relevant policy that no one has considered, or by finding a reliable source to replace a blog source.  More often, RFC's work (if they work at all) by numerical pile-on -- when the editors see that many other editors (particularly ones they respect) make a particular judgment call the other way, they may change their mind, or at least disagree with but respect the "consensus."  However, IMHO, it's the "votes" that do it, plus the identity and reputation of the voters, much more than the arguments.
Just my two cents, TheronJ 14:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it seems like you are describing a true consensus to respect the vote.  :-)  I don't mean to be fatuous... I think that the real reason voting is harmful is that it isn't native to the wiki process.  Wikis evolve through a) individual action, and b) community consensus (in practice mostly negative consensus, i.e. a general unwillingness to accept certain changes).   Voting creates a dangerous illusion that the outcome of the vote has some force of its own.  But in practice a vote accomplishes nothing unless either a) a person with some special power (usually an admin) boldly chooses to accept its outcome, such as by deleting or moving a page, or b) the community shows a true consensus to abide by the result.  In other words, again, voting can be a useful tool to guide arbitration or community practice.  But the vote itself accomplishes nothing.  Pretending otherwise puts us at odds with Wikipedia's very nature, and feeds into all sorts of misguided instruction creep.  Voting is best avoided, in part, because it encourages a faulty conception of what this project is all about.  -- Visviva 16:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My general concerns about DDV