On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Ryan Delaney <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 4:38 AM, Peter Tesler <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi everyone - >> This is a project presented at Wikipedia Day 2010 at NYU in New York >> last January..http://ideagra.ph >> We presented this as a way to discuss a few of the most >> complicated/controversial Wikimedia-related issues that haven't yet >> garnered a consensus. It was specifically designed to fix the current >> problems with Wikipedia's discuss pages (arguments get very long, >> complex, and messy). >> >> What makes a debate here different from one on a standard discuss page? >> Statements have a color (green/red) which represents their current >> state of consensus (something that's been refuted, for instance, is >> red). You can also re-use facts concluded in other debates by other >> people - thus allowing the work of debating/reasoning to be >> distributed among (potentially) billions of people. >> >> We've created a Wikipedia category for issues surrounding Wikipedia: >> http://ideagra.ph/1870 >> >> We need your feedback... >> >> -Peter >> >> Twitter: http://twitter.com/ideagraph >> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ideagraph/319390481771 >> >> >> > The software looks pretty cool. Here are some of my concerns about it. > > A common way to stifle discussion about nuance in any situation is to refer > to old discussions on similar ideas and say "we already discussed this and > got consensus". Keeping an ancient history of all past debates could cause a > single discussion to echo forward in time indefinitely. I don't think we > should feel bound by previous arguments, and there is never a point where > discussion cannot be re-opened. > > Also, keeping track of percentages in "voting" has a way of obscuring the > actual arguments as not everyone's opinion is simply "up or down" on any > issue. For example, this is why we don't simply count votes in an AFD (at > least, we're not supposed to): We want to consider the weight of the > arguments and get a more abstract 'feel' for what consensus is, rather than > compiling a simple tally, because tallies aren't very informative. > > Finally, and most importantly, sometimes we need to go over topics again to > address evolving editorial experience and new circumstances. It doesn't > bother me if that means occasionally re-inventing the wheel, because every > time we invent the wheel it might be a bit better or more well-suited to the > situation than last time. It's good to archive past discussion for later > reference (or to "catch up" new people who joined the conversation late), > but not because we don't want people to have to think, use their reasoning, > and engage in discussion on topics that someone else has discussed in the > past; we want that because the process of discussion itself is > enlightenment, even when the topic has been discussed in the past. > > - causa sui
For as far as I can see, this software actually tries to solve those problems, by making it possible to comment on/refute old discussions, while still weighing them, and it weighs opinions by the amount of support it seems to have, opposed to simple vote counting. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
