User:Eloquence/Notes

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Some notes on consensus as a decision making process:

  • Tyranny of the cranks - highly motivated individuals can delay decisions forever or sometimes succeed in annoying people into agreeing with them (or at least they believe they can, and therefore never stop arguing, making other, more important discussions impossible). The only way to prevent this is to apply force, which can probably not happen under consensus because the cranks will likely have a small group of followers.
  • Often there is no middle ground that can be taken. There may be decisions of different scope (such as "ban user X forever" vs. "ban user X just for 7 days"), but these are still yes/no decisions (ban vs. don't ban).
  • Even when there is a middle ground, people are often unwilling to make compromises. If a compromise is then made, it is often against the expressed will of the participating individuals -- again, consensus is replaced by ad hoc decisions by those who can make them (empowered users like coders or admins on Wikipedia), but it is suggested that the decisions were arrived by through consensus finding. A real vote would show that this is not the case.
  • The "consensus = mostly unanimous" is very similar to voting with high thresholds, but less formalized and structured, less quantifiable and less reliable. Thresholds can be set high in voting systems, particularly for far-reaching decisions, to find a good balance between the process of decision evaluation and the actual decision making.
  • Most important point (needs to be hammered in): Because consensus so obviously and miserably fails whenever it is tried, decisions are then usually made in a centralized, "benevolent dictator" model, or by those who are empowered to make them.
  • The "consensus is not unanimous" argument is a strawman (built to repel the most obvious attacks against the consensus process), because it isn't defined when exactly the consensus is reached. Is a 70% vote a "mostly unanimous" decision? 80%? 60%? Without quantification this statement is useless to compare voting vs. consensus.

Cases where consensus was substituted with decisions by the benevolent dictator, Jimbo:

  • the banning of Helga, Lir and 24
  • the protection of Lir's user page

Cases where consensus was substituted with decisions by admins as soon as the discussion ended:

  • the "Pi to X digits" pages and several other pages on the "Votes for deletion" page

Arguments against voting:

  • "Tyranny of the majority": This makes a certain assumption, namely that people will stop caring about the opinions of others as soon as they are given the option of doing so. This is in philosophical contrast to the belief that most people generally have good intentions. In a voting process where discussions are integrated (such as by requiring a discussion phase before voting, as suggested in the proposal), the discussion phase can be used by all parties to make their case and to listen to each other's arguments. Votes should be changeable even after the fact when dealing with reversible decisions. This assures the potential for continuing debate, which is, however, separated and structured. If people are indeed unwilling to listen to others, they will not become more willing in a consensus process -- instead, that would mean that decisions could not be made at all in consensus.