104:, Knowledgeâs co-founder, is not our leader on this English Knowledge encyclopedia. He is a former figurehead, and has an honorary seat on the Wikimedia Board of Trustees, but has no actual authority on this project more than any other Administrator of a thousand do. His role largely is advisory, as a talking head to promote the idea of a Wiki-type project (including his for-profit Wikia.com corporation), and to solicit funding with our annual fund-raising program. Anyone who tells you otherwise, himself included, is simply incorrect. He has his power by the gratis of the communityâthe editors of Knowledgeâand nothing more. He is not the legal owner of anything in Knowledge and has not been in some time; he has an extremely limited âboxâ of authority, which is ill-defined, but can do nothing major. Perhaps years ago, he could, but not today.
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218:, to have final arbitration âgroupsâ that is wholly elected and promoted 100% by the user base of this website, which could act as final decision makers not just on behavioral issues, like the present Arbitration Committee, but also on matters of content and policy/âlegalâ disputes, as a triumvirate. Each would be mutually exclusive from each otherâs realms, and with functionally equal power in their own way, and would allow for people to move past all the nonsense to concentrate on the only real reason weâre supposed to be here: to make an encyclopedia. The idea was likely so alien that people either ignored it, or shot it down.
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and be heard fairly, with uniform application of policy and rules to each and every one of themâanything less is simply wrongâbut the ideas which lie behind consensus of giving each user a âpieceâ of the solution is simply, fundamentally, and unequivocally stupid. People lose in the real world, and lose all the time. Someone is right, and someone is wrong. The current usage of a consensus system is a waste of time since it conveys to many the idea that any solution that doesnât consider the needs of all users isnât that great.
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111:, as the only major elected body on this website. However, many users are adamant that this group live in a very small, very narrowly defined realm of reactive judging of âdisputesâ between users, of a behavioral variety. Is one or more users misbehaving? Then it falls under the purview of the Arbitration Committee. Anything else? No â and many users are adamant about this.
118:, or mob rule, but it is not. It's a slothful riot of selfish one-man mobs, or occasionally small cabals of like-minded sloths. Each moves their own way, and has the ability to completely block the flow of traffic, due to the fact that no one is in a position of rightful authority to tell them when to cross the proverbial street.
177:, and is attempted to be torn down before it even begins work. The mood and disposition of the websiteâs users has grown increasingly nasty over the yearsâit was a much more gracious and welcoming place, when I began using it in 2005âand today, itâs a constant war over the smallest details. Our mistreatment of
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This is a model of ineffectual anarchy. It feeds peopleâs egos that all opinions and positions are of equal value, when they simply are not, and never will be. All users who are willing to commit to a fixed username to build a legitimate history and contribute do have an equal standing to sound off
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Do you have any idea how much time and aggravation this would save? Of course, this will never happen, since it would immediately de-power a great many people that have âcontrolâ over various articles, article families, or aspects of the
Knowledge project. Which is, ultimately, the worst thing, is
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As simple and as stupid as it sounds, once a situation gets intractable, this is the only real way forward. Once a debate or dispute reaches that point where everyone is just repeating the same talking points again, you need to put a communal foot down. How do you do this, however, when our flawed
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The ideal of a âconsensusâ of users determining a course of action on this website was previously the nominal way in which we decided things. It used to workâuntil the scope and scale of the site grew wildly with the number of its users, and when many users realized that by simply digging in their
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Bullshit, I say. People are wrong, at times, and should be told they are wrong, and if they dislike the so-called âconsensusâ, too bad. Move along, you lost. The problem, however, is that they can dig their heels in, and derail anything and everything. This is fueled by further nonsense like our
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The neat cumulative end result of all of this is that, if someone puts their mind to it, they can filibuster anything and everything they dislike forever and a day. This leaves
Knowledge, in any area of positive forward growth and governance, an ineffectual wasteland. Do these ideas I listed in
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heels intractably, that they could take control of this deeply flawed system to gain whatever they wanted for political, social, personal, or other reasons. The other major problem with âconsensusâ is that many, many users adamantly refuse in many cases to set a bar of what âisâ consensus.
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You need a binding leadership that is not self-appointed, like Jimmy Wales. You need a group or two raised up from the community of users that has what some might call âBinding
Authorityâ to close the endless loop of noise that is the community itself. Any successful organization or
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corporationâanyâhas ultimate leadership that can close the door on any and all discussions. Our website, in its shortsightedness, is setup to not have any such thing. We donât need ineffectual non-leadership. We need a solid leadership that can close doors to move forward.
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Perhaps, in the end, all the people presently âin powerâ, or misguidedly thinking that they are, will simply need to be removed if they remain or become an increased impediment to the success of
Knowledge. They can be, of course, to create a new model.
254:. Or, failing that, we can simply fire those who think they're in power today, and muscle through change that can put firm leadership in place. The alternative is to sit, and wait, for the site to spiral more out of control every year.
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As mentioned, this is having an increasingly nasty overall effect on
Knowledge. Positive forward changes get all but impossible to happen. Even the creation of a simple Advisory Council, with literally no powers nor authority, is
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Too much of this website is like this door; we need to empower groups in regards to both content and policy to some degree to close this door from swinging. If that is antithetical to how we
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points 1-3 work perfectly for the matters of creating content on the website? I think so. Do they work for anything else? Only a blind man could truly believe so.
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The content is still getting created. Articles are still being written, but overall the number of active editors has been flat, and growing flatter as a trend,
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Consensus Can Change (in other words, even if you lost once, you can go back to the Well of
Argumentation again⌠and again⌠and again⌠and againâŚ)
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that there are sad people who can and do everything in their power to derail any effort to equalize aspects of the governance of this website.
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structure allowsâand even encourages!âany fool to repeatedly go back to the well, again and again? Simple, binding votes. How simple?
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Knowledge leadership today: none, and random people throwing rocks for their own gain and to prevent the formation of leadership.
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subjects, articles about living people, gets us constant negative press coverage. Morale of our users is at an all-time low.
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Voting Is Evil (CONSENSUS AND DISCUSSION are our Gods, regardless of their being deaf, dumb, and blind Gods)
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How
Knowledge pretends it functions: random milling about, and blocking the workflow of traffic.
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to do things, or how the founders of this website envisioned things, that's a shame.
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231:âHow many people in favor of Bobâs view? How many in favor of Johnâs view?â
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Ignore All Rules (all the rules on
Knowledge are fake, didnât you know?)
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233:âBob, youâve lost. Weâre not revisiting this for so many months.â
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User 1: âHow many people need to agree for us to have consensus?â
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Knowledge, by its model and design, is toothless and leaderless.
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Perhaps what we need is the
Knowledge equivalent of a
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Perhaps a purge is looming; perhaps anarchy is looming
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The next closest thing we have to leadership is the
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55:If Knowledge were a ship, it would look like this.
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60:Knowledge governance is functionally broken and
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262:Its about the ability to simply close a door:
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279:They don't own Knowledge, anymore. We do.
130:A typical conversation may go like this:
201:What we need more of; a touch of ?order.
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214:Iâd proposed something of the sort at
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258:Ultimately, it's not about control
222:Consensus system change: just vote
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68:How is Knowledge failing at this?
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140:User 2: âAs many as it takes.â
136:User 2: âAs many as it takes.â
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304:Why Knowledge is not so great
114:Knowledge pretends it is an
96:No leadership with authority
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138:User 1: âHow many is that?â
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18:User:GoneAwayNowAndRetired
206:Leadership with authority
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252:Protestant Reformation
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175:met with massive scorn
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109:Arbitration Committee
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290:Knowledge Committees
216:Knowledge Committees
185:How do you fix this?
122:Consensus is a joke
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168:Cumulative effects
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297:Governance reform
22:(Redirected from
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83:What is broken?
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73:as seen here
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320:User essays
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102:Jimbo Wales
43:WP:WPBROKEN
116:ochlocracy
62:is failing
314:Category
283:See also
35:Shortcut
179:WP:BLP
16:<
274:used
77:here
75:and
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26:)
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