User:Tothwolf/rescued essays/Consensus and linked issues

Wikipedia consensus process tends to be result-oriented. It's called "rough consensus," to distinguish it from complete consensus, which is a standard that becomes quite difficult to obtain when the scale becomes large. Even with relatively small numbers of participants, the time it can take to find complete consensus can expand exponentially with the number of active participants.

Maximizing consensus, however, minimizes disruption and tends to unite the community.

However, even when dealing with small numbers of participants, the handful typically active in a contentious article, there is another obstacle to consensus, which is linkage of issues. When some decision has become contentious, and remains so for an extended time, the sides each develop arguments that support their position. Some editors don't attach themselves to a position, and can be seen taking individual positions on subissues that don't necessarily connect with some ideological position. But it is very, very human to link issues, so that a larger question involves a mass of assumptions and assertions mixed together.

Good consensus facilitators know to break problems down to tiny steps, issues as small as possible, seeking agreement; when disagreement appears and doesn't readily resolve, they explore each issue in minute detail. "How do you know such-and-such, what was your experience, why do you believe that?"

When editors are truly attached to a position, i.e., they have become deeply involved, they may become unable to consider subissues, and will take ridiculous positions against what normally would be a simply agreeable statement, because they see that statement as connected with the overall Big Question, and they have a conclusion that they must support.

So when an attempt is made to consider each small issue individually, they will disrupt it with "But this is linked with that." If this is true, that would then be considered when the overall question is being looked at. What happens if this linking, at the basic level, with the simplest questions, is tolerated, is that it becomes impossible to find consensus, disputes remain unresolved, with one side or another, or sometimes both, being dissatisfied, which then leads to further conflict.

An example: a web site is blacklisted because of alleged linkspamming and alleged unusability as a reliable source. In addition, that the web site is fringe, has allegedly altered documents, and hosts copyright violations, all are alleged. An editor wants to use a link from this site, and makes a credible case on the whitelisting page that this link for this purpose is allowable, and it is whitelisted. The editor then goes to the article and puts in the link. It's removed, giving a reason above. It's put back, and removed, giving another of the reasons above. It's replaced, and then removed with another reason above.

Each replacement is made with discussion addressing the objection. But new reasons continue to be asserted. At some point it may be suspected that the action is conclusion-driven, not based on arguments. The removing editor doesn't like the web site or the POV it allegedly holds, or the site manager, or something that hasn't been stated.

However, we assume good faith. So an editor starts to examine the objections, and lists them as distinctly as he can.


 * 1) Copyright violation
 * 2) Fringe
 * 3) Alteration of documents
 * 4) Not reliable source
 * 5) Site was linkspammed

In discussing the "fringe" allegation, it's objected that this can't be separated from the issue of "alteration of documents," since, allegedly, a "fringe" site would be more likely to alter documents. Yet under the "alteration of documents" section, it's shown that the alleged alteration was prefixing an editorial introduction to a public domain, governmental document, the document itself wasn't altered, it was merely "framed" with a possibly biased introduction. This would be a reason to deprecate linking to that site for that document, but not to impeach the site. But linking this with "fringe," in the mind of the editor arguing this, makes it more difficult to tease out the truth about each argument, they all get mashed together.

Good deliberative process and good consensus process will break down questions into subquestions, seeking consensus on each narrow issue, building a larger consensus from small agreements. But when parties become polarized and issues become linked, larger consensus becomes impossible and disruption is practically guaranteed.