Wikibooks talk:Decision making/Unstable

Move to Enforce
I would like to start a motion to enforce this proposal as a policy instead of the current guideline text at Decision making. The current guideline is already followed with few (if any) exceptions, and this should be a case of policy conforming to the community. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Have to say I'm not sure I agree with "For high-impact decisions, discussions and debates should be left open as long as progress towards reaching consensus is being made." to me that is death by attrition - those not bored to death will win? -- Herby talk thyme 19:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's actually one part of the proposal that hasn't changed from the current enforced version! But yes, it is death by attrition, because the community must reach concensus before a change can be made. Basically, there are three ways a discussion can end:
 * Everybody agrees to accept (proposal accepted)
 * Everybody agrees to reject (proposal rejected)
 * People can't agree, nothing happens (implicit rejection).
 * As such, it is much harder to change the status quo then it is to keep things the same. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I see Whiteknight as making two distinct proposals:


 * That the decision making guideline should be reclassified as a policy
 * That Decision making/Unstable should replace the current verson of WB:Decision making

On the first point, I agree that we should have a decision making policy. That policy may, in time, get supplemented by guidelines, but for now I think it is sufficient just to have a policy.

In terms of the unstable branch, I'm afraid that I'm not really sure what it is trying to achieve. I note from the history that it appears to be a joint effort of Darklama and Whiteknight. I'd be grateful if one or both of them could let me know what their objective is and how they see the unstable branch version as achieving that objective.

One aspect I do not like is the early introduction of a substantial section on "Ownership and Authorship". Ownership and authorship has no bearing on decision making, so I don't see why a section on this is needed in this policy. If there is a point to be made there, it is either for another policy on a related topic or in an explanatory guideline to the policy proper. Jguk 21:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The objective was to make it clearer that the reason for the decision making process is due to the nature of Wikibooks not having a single author or owner and that the decision making process is used for more then making policy decisions. I disagree with you. Ownership/Authorship does have bearing on decision making. If there was but one owner/author there would simply be no need to deal with disagreements since there would be nobody else to disagree with. The point is to make the decising making process more understandable and explain why it is needed. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 22:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Very astute, I am making two separate proposals (or, I am proposing that one thing happens in a particular way). Due to some recent events, it was brought to our attention that wikibooks doesnt have a policy equivalent to w:WP:OWN, something that has already caused a few problems. I drafted a local version at WB:OWN, but (out of fear of sprawl or instruction creep) User:Darklama proposed instead that we merge the text of the draft at WB:OWN into another policy.
 * History aside, I think that the section on ownership is an important one to have, and I also think that this is a mostly appropriate place for it. If decisions are made by concensus, then it's implicit that one user can't treat a particular discussion like a dictatorship. However, nowhere in all of wikibooks policy is it mentioned that this is the case (except implicitly from the definition of "concensus"). For that reason, I think that this policy needs to have at least some mention of ownership. However, you and I are of the same mind in that we both seem to prefer succinct policy documents with supporting guidelines. We could minimize the section here on ownership and redirect inquiries on the subject to WB:OWN, but I'm afraid that (again, due to instruction creep), that people will fight the establishment of two separate documents much more then they would fight the establishment of a single monolithic policy.
 * Given the two options: (A) create a single monolithic policy document, or (B) create a succinct policy with supporting guidelines, I would prefer the latter, but not to the extent that I would try to prevent these policies from being implemented.--Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:11, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

First, may I thank Darklama and Whiteknight for their explanations? I'm afraid, however, that I find myself disagreeing with them: I don't see ownership and authorship as being related to our decision making process.

Let me illustrate by way of an example. Suppose, for sake of argument, that I protected all the book modules that I created so no-one else could edit them, so that I "own" those pages. (I agree this is contrary to policy, I just make this supposition to show that our decision making rules are a separate issue to ownership and authorship).

Under that supposition, there is only one sentence of the whole of the policy that follows that would be out of place ("Decisions that affects the content, structure or scope of a single textbook or project, must follow the rules for high impact decisions except where all parties agree to use another basis.") The rest of the policy, eg how we decide admins, bureaucrats, BOTM, COTM, etc. is unchanged.

My conclusion is that we should not have something on ownership and authorship in this policy/guideline. I don't comment here on whether it may be appropriate to have it as a separate policy/guideline, or merged in with another policy/guideline. Jguk 15:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The one sentence you speak of is a clarification of one that already exists in the current policy "Should a decision need to be made that affects a single module, a single book or a single project it will usually use the rules for high impact decisions except where all parties agree to use another basis." So how we are suppose to decide book contents is unchanged as well, These changes are relatively minor and are ment to aid in clarifying whats already present in the policy and current practise. The current policy only mentions it as a possible after thought and seems to focus almost entirely on decision making as it applies to policy making. With these changes I think the policy becomes more balanced rather then focusing on one or the other and provides clarity as a result that decision making is about both working together to make decisions about books when disagreements arise and when working together on making policies that effect everyone. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 16:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * ownership and authorship as being related to our decision making process


 * There is a need on Wikibooks to reduce debates and clear the path for active collaboration, there is a need to specify local or if you wish book policies (policies that go beyond general Wikibooks policies or guidelines), book communities etc...


 * There are now several books that do provide not only a set of internal guidelines but also some external rules to how content contribution should proceed inside the books namespace, it is my view that such guidelines or rules are good and increase the consistency and enable a more structured and productive collaboration (a central location to express and establish the wishes of contributors for the evolution of the book) but this rises another problem...


 * Who should have a say on the evolution of a particular book, Wikibookians in general are and should continue to be able to set general rules (or non book specific policies and guidelines), be able to participate in any book community (we must define that), etc... the normal rules doesn't need any change on that regard as we fallow a decision by consensus this would not involve any change in the voting it would only reduce the scope of the debate to a specific interest group...


 * Who should be defined as a book community, well anyone that actively participates in adding content to a book this should set aside spammer and people with no good intentions or even people that place form above content, form is ephemeral, content will always prevail by shifting the rules to define this new concepts a increased level of stability is archived for the development and general evolution of the books.


 * So I do agree with User:Darklama "Ownership/Authorship does have bearing on decision making.", as in the sense that authors is the one that sign and are responsible for their work (even legally) and are the first person interested in the work itself and its evolution, and we cannot forget that contributors do own their contributions, lets say for example a user has a book under a non GFDL compatible license and wants to port it/or part to Wikibooks, he may need to keep a consistent relation within the works structure...


 * As for Jguk example it doesn't work, any similar action (even if not prevented by a policy) could be objected to by any Wikibookian and an dispute and the need of consensus would arise that would restore the status quo, if not then it would have been sanctioned by the community and a future reversal would need the same consensus. --Panic 18:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus
Until a consensus can agree that a good majority vote is necessary for decision taking there will always be problems. The recent bust up over a programming text was small beer compared with what happens on Wikipedia. That said, any policy on the decision taking issue is better than none! RobinH 15:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Establishing policys
From my own experience, many of the policies and even the "rules" that govern things like the "Wikijunior New Book of the Quarter" section are usually done in such a way that somebody merely is bold and takes the initive to simply make something happen.

Certainly there is reason to say that policies that are established in this manner are merely "proposed" rather than "enforced", which is precisely why for some time Wikibooks was mostly dominated by proposed policies rather than enforced ones. Of course the distinction between proposed and enforced polcies was only done because a previously active admin decided to be bold and make the distinction, establishing a preceedent.

I will say that it has been very interesting to see how some of these policies have emerged. My worry that I've expressed in the past is that I hate to see policies established for the sake of establishing policies. Or more to the point, I also try to follow the policy (for my own behavior) of "he who governs best governs least."

As another way to put it: Rules are established to fix the mistakes of those who screwed it up for the rest of us.

There are times that policies and rules simply need to be established because of abusive behavior in the past. Clearly some of the actions of vandals and the establishment of the various heirarchies of Wikimedia projects are a direct result of trying to deal with blatant vandalism and keep it down to a dull roar. I have seen wikis where the vandals were successful in taking over and overthrowing the "legitimate" content developers (it is ugly BTW, especially when the website owner doesn't care in the least). For the most part I think we have been successful in winning this particular battle, in spite of some bizzare things that happen from time to time.

On the other hand, there are some people who like to be rule lawyers and make rules and policies just for the sake of pure political power. When done to an extreme, you end up with legalese text that is volumnous and discouraging to those who simply want to "get the job done". Often this is done explicitly to achieve some political objective or to promote some "faction" over another group. This kind of policy making should be discourgaed when possible, and to be honest seems to be something of why I'm against (weakly) this whole decision making policy from becoming an enforced policy at all.

I don't think there are too many policies that really fit strongly into either extreme group, although I do believe there are some that are more strongly one or the other (the rules about granting check user rights are more to the rules made simply to write rules, for example). In order to even get into the business of wrting policies, you have to have a bit of an ego on you anyway and being a bit of a politician and a lawyer to boot.

All this said, most of what is written here with this policy is mainly common sense written down, with the only "policy" really being the section on the community concensus process. I would consider that a strong guideline, only to be circumvented when a genuine crisis situation develops.

It should be noted that the process never really is completed. It is reasonable for somebody to challenge a decision that was made in the past and question why it was done that way. I have seen some policies get overturned in the past, even when set down by a prominent individual.

The worst situations I've dealt with while being an admin were those individuals who for some reason or another decided to appeal to "higher authority" and cause the wrath of members of the WMF board of trustees to be directly involved in settling a dispute. While I like Jimbo personally, and I think his contributions have been very useful, he has been an incredibly disruptive force here on Wikibooks in the past. Most of this is because his decisions have largly thrown out the whole concept of concensus, and even when you want to gain concensus his actions taint the whole process. "Jimbo says" is usually sufficient to kill a discussion or change it to debate what exactly Jimbo said. Luckily I don't think any admin except Jimbo has that sort of power.

BTW, as a side note, I do think Jimbo edits here on Wikibooks on addition account names and has even gone into the Staff Lounge under such names. I strongly suspect a couple of them for personal reasons, but if he wants to be anonymous in doing so I will leave him in peace. --Rob Horning 18:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with a majority of what you have said, Rob. I do believe that we should keep our policy documents to a minimum, and I say this for a number of reasons: We want people to have a good amount of freedom, we want people to be able to excercise a certain amount of judgement and common sense when making decisions, and we don't want to fall into the over-legislative problems that wikipedia has experianced. However, I am not of the belief that we should have no policy documents, or that we should only have guidelines, or anything so extreme as that. I think that it should be the official policy of wikibooks that decisions are made by concensus, and not by any other method. We do need some rules here, and I think this is one of the few that we absolutely do need. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:59, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

My edits (Proposal Text)
I edited a bit. If you look at the diff, you be'll horrified. It looks worse than it is. I don't know how to explain my edits; just take a look. Thank you very much. --Iamunknown 01:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I like your changes for the most part, I thought the definition of concensus should go before the impact of decisions section though in order for readers to know what concensus means before they get to that part. I merged most of it into the Terminology section. I tried to clearify what I believed you ment by "deciding to enforce official Wikibooks" by splitting it into its own example and changing it to say "Changing the state of policies and guidelines (such as from proposed to official)". I changed the begining of the Process section to read:


 * 'Wikibooks is not a demoncracy, Wikibookians discuss points, compromise and try to reach community consensus. Wikibookians generally do not "vote" on anything and a simple voter majority is not the default, nor recommonded method of deciding any discussion. Decision making relies upon Wikibookians acting in good faith to come to a commonly acceptable decision through negotiation and compromise.'
 * 'There is no single "right way" to achieve community consensus. However, one possible step-by-step process for discussions and working towards a community consensus is:'


 * And a few other minor things. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 03:56, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I liked your changes, and you got my meaning right on. I made minor edits. I think that I didn't change the meaning of any of the clauses; it was all prosaic. Check 'em out here. --Iamunknown 07:48, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I liked some of your changes. I undid the introduction bit, because I think what it previously said was friendlier, but I kept "than" over "then" and I turned Textbook into a link to WB:WIW. I also cut down a little bit on the process through some I hope clarification. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 09:28, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

There should a time restriction on re-evaluation of the same problem, and a limit to the number of votes to be equal or greater than the previous, something on those lines this will prevent needless debaites and policies to be passed or changed without the community noticing it.--Panic 19:15, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * How to run a discussion/User responses

This should be asked to User_talk:Darklama but I ask it here because it explains a change on the text.
 * "Decisions that affects the content, structure or scope of a single textbook or project, must follow the rules for high impact decisions except where all parties agree to use another basis."

Darklama, why did you convert that to a low impact decision, what was rational of the change ? txs. --Panic 21:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe the only way it is concidered a high impact decision is in the method it imploys which is using concensus as the method to resolve disputes when they arise if no other method is agreed to by the Wikibookians involved in the dispute. For example at one point you and I agreed to moderation which changed the method imployed to resolve an issue that arose. I believe calling it a high impact decision is misleading and is considerably inconsist with the rest of the text. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 21:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Not so, I proposed mediation to provide more view points (comments) but we were already working toward a consensus, well not a consensus but a compromise, since some of the dispute did arise form interpretation of our actual license and its use and that couldn't be compromised. Remember also that most of the moderators( they were also administrators ) avoided to make direct interpretations and none provided any acceptable solution . --Panic 21:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)