Continuing on in the great WR tradition of futile discussions on simple, straightforward, obvious improvements to the Wikipedia in the face of absolute idiocy ... I was thinking about Australia's voting system in comparison to the Wikipedian practise of "community consensus". A "consensus" that might only be created by a single admin, a handful of opinionates, or the usual cabal.

Democracy in most cultures is a bit of a flaccid failure because, to be frank, too many people cannot be bothered and it is rigged ... but a few brave attempts have been made through out history to change that.

In Australia, voting is now compulsory for every Australian citizen aged 18 years or older. If one does not vote and do not have a valid and sufficient reason for failing to vote, a penalty is imposed.

Considering this latest debacle about porn on the Pee-dia, I was thinking about the WMF's will to find out what the whole community thought about this rather than use "the community" to promote its own agenda. Polling would be a simple way of doing that.

So ... fail again ... no one can be bothered ... no one knows where to find it ... no one knows it is going on.

But the Wikipedia is in a unique position to polls its members. Each time they log on, they log on. At log on point, they could easily be polled as per any internet questionnaire or survey. It does not need to even be intrusively done.

Important issues ... whatever they might be deemed to be ... no vote, no edit. Simple. Fixed. It does not need to be a "vote", it could just be a survey of opinion.

My feeling is that it is an utterly futile suggestion. They don't want to know what people think. How many people of a similar nature they have, I don't know. Given the anonymity and scale, I am pretty sure they cannot know who they have on board and what they really think.

Have or are any efforts made to find out?