On Suspending Judgment & Respect &, Responsibility & Standards & Tradition Options

[thekohser]

I hope that this makes for suitable "Meta" discussion. The source comes from the Foundation-l mailing list, a post by Ray Saintonge:

The essence of wikiness is crowd sourcing and the principle that many
eyes will over time produce a valid product. The cultish perfectionism
that demands absolute reliability in every word won't ever work.
Sometimes we bec ome a little too concerned with our fears that a
particular passage may be libellous or a copyvio. We become driven by
the fear that someone is just behind us waiting to severely punish our
every misstep. If we are to trust everyone to edit we have to trust
everyone to evaluate.

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

This neatly sums up the anti-expert culture that pervades Wikipedia, along with the blind notion that if "trust" is extended to everyone (even paid teams of content manipulators), everything will eventually work out okay.

[Kwork]

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

Yeh. This sounds like content that should be discussed on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. The New Age dawns on Wikipedia.

[Lar]

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

Yeh. This sounds like content that should be discussed on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. The New Age dawns on Wikipedia.

While it may not be "respect and tradition" that is needed (try expecting respect and see how far it gets you), the consensus model just doesn't scale. So something else is needed. Wikipedia isn't an experiment in government, so it's not necessarily "governance" but some kind of management is.

I think there's a large number of folk in the en:wp community who either don't understand this, or do understand it, but choose to make use of that fact to keep the status quo in place for whatever reason.

[GlassBeadGame]

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

Yeh. This sounds like content that should be discussed on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. The New Age dawns on Wikipedia.

While it may not be "respect and tradition" that is needed (try expecting respect and see how far it gets you), the consensus model just doesn't scale.

I think there's a large number of folk in the en:wp community who either don't understand this, or do understand it, but choose to make use of that fact to keep the status quo in place for whatever reason.

Wikipedia does not have and never had a "consensus" model of decision making. I don't mean they have a funny version of "consensus" either. Inherent in instant atomized content creation is an ultra individualist principle that mimics market decision making. The wiki "decides" to say whatever the last editor chooses that it says. This is suppose to result in self improving content. All the various "consensus" layers exist because the primary market like model doesn't actually work.

[Milton Roe]

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

Yeh. This sounds like content that should be discussed on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. The New Age dawns on Wikipedia.

While it may not be "respect and tradition" that is needed (try expecting respect and see how far it gets you), the consensus model just doesn't scale.

I think there's a large number of folk in the en:wp community who either don't understand this, or do understand it, but choose to make use of that fact to keep the status quo in place for whatever reason.

Wikipedia does not have and never had a "consensus" model of decision making. I don't mean they have a funny version of "consensus" either. Inherent in instant atomized content creation is an ultra individualist principle that mimics market decision making. The wiki "decides" to say whatever the last editor chooses that it says. This is suppose to result in self improving content. All the various "consensus" layers exist because the primary market like model doesn't actually work.

There is nothing "market like" in the primary WP model of what they call "consensus." A "market" by definition is a venue with open and free trade ("free" doesn't mean that theft is allowed, but it does presume no draconian tariffs or import/export quotas and the like). It really does operate by a kind of consensus, which is what sets a SINGLE price. You cannot have a single price at any given time, without consensus as to what that price should be.

Whenever you have one trading venue insulated or semi-insulated from another, by tariffs or quotas or local controls, or the sorts of things that make the same pharmaceuticals 50% more expensive in the US than in Canada or the UK (or the rest of the Western world, really), then you don't have ONE market. You have two or more markets. TWO greatly differing prices for the same good DEFINES two markets.

Now, compare this to the thoroughly atomized (all right, Balkanized) "consensus" process on WP, in which things are decided for each article among small groups of local warlords and power-owners, who throroughly (and effectively) resist having any standards for decission-making cross local article-boundaries. By using little mantras like OTHERSTUFFEXISTs to keep standards in one argument about one article, from being applied to any other argument about any other article.

There's nothing market-like about this at all. It's a thousand or a million little "markets" (warlord territories), each with their own separate "consensus" process, and some minor smuggling that connects them.

[GlassBeadGame]

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be
counterintuitive.

Yeh. This sounds like content that should be discussed on WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard. The New Age dawns on Wikipedia.

While it may not be "respect and tradition" that is needed (try expecting respect and see how far it gets you), the consensus model just doesn't scale.

I think there's a large number of folk in the en:wp community who either don't understand this, or do understand it, but choose to make use of that fact to keep the status quo in place for whatever reason.

Wikipedia does not have and never had a "consensus" model of decision making. I don't mean they have a funny version of "consensus" either. Inherent in instant atomized content creation is an ultra individualist principle that mimics market decision making. The wiki "decides" to say whatever the last editor chooses that it says. This is suppose to result in self improving content. All the various "consensus" layers exist because the primary market like model doesn't actually work.

There is nothing "market like" in the primary WP model of what they call "consensus." A "market" by definition is a venue with open and free trade ("free" doesn't mean that theft is allowed, but it does presume no draconian tariffs or import/export quotas and the like). It really does operate by a kind of consensus, which is what sets a SINGLE price. You cannot have a single price at any given time, without consensus as to what that price should be.

Whenever you have one trading venue insulated or semi-insulated from another, by tariffs or quotas or local controls, or the sorts of things that make the same pharmaceuticals 50% more expensive in the US than in Canada or the UK (or the rest of the Western world, really), then you don't have ONE market. You have two or more markets. TWO greatly differing prices for the same good DEFINES two markets.

Now, compare this to the thoroughly atomized (all right, Balkanized) "consensus" process on WP, in which things are decided for each article among small groups of local warlords and power-owners, who throroughly (and effectively) resist having any standards for decission-making cross local article-boundaries. By using little mantras like OTHERSTUFFEXISTs to keep standards in one argument about one article, from being applied to any other argument about any other article.

There's nothing market-like about this at all. It's a thousand or a million little "markets" (warlord territories), each with their own separate "consensus" process, and some minor smuggling that connects them.

It is "market-like" in that:

• It involves completely individual choices;
• It is controlled by the "invisible hand "of the aggregate of many supposedly self correcting interactions;
• It produces the illusion of a complete lack of coercion;
• It doesn't really work, except to reinforce the position of pre-established elites.

Consensus is not "atomized." It is an inherently collective process and deal with issues as whole pieces, even in the distorted form used on Wikipedia.

The things you say about warlords and all are more or less correct. The constitute the sick and distorted political economy of Wikipedia. Of course one of the purposes of "markets" is so that societies can deny they even have political economy and to hide it from view.