User:Cpiral/my personal consensus

Information runs throughout life, and consensus channels it to affect the forces of life. There is consensus inside and outside us, consensus over there and over here. Wikipedia uses consensus to effect the encyclopedia project.

Consensus in Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a global knowledge project for our times. If everyone attended, then fog that every consensus cuts through would be the planetary outer space itself. Talk pages publish information swirling about controversies of any size or location. Information is shared until someone cinches it in words.

Wikipedia consensus decrees concerning phraseology and ideology are implicitly stored in the document, and explicitly stored in the discussions resolutions. Our shelved discussions are stocked with valuable information for those who pay attention.

For documents produced largely by consensus it is imperative to search the discussions. Consensus is not stored by footnoting or page watching. It is therefore advisable to first scrub-search the archived discussions, and failing that offer up a discussion, just in case. It is not yet clear which parts of the guideline or policy are such decrees.

How'd ya like to edit some core policy and change User: Jimbo Wales ideas by accident? Might that affect a rift in the temporal continuum? Wikipedia's unique manual of style is is consensus decreed phraseology and ideology. The effortless ability of Wikipedia to easily forge an entirely unique project policy and writing style is enabled by the work of volunteers reaching consensus.

Wikipedia is a product of consensus, starting mentally with the founder's statements of values and ending mentally with computed language translation; starting physically with MediaWiki headquarters, and ending physically with geographic scales the size of the world wide web.

Who wins

Whoever casts the best light wins, especially if they paid respect to each valid issue. The win win directs a realignment of each constituent, such that many lights forge through one fog. From a pulling in all directions comes a pushing in one direction.

A focused and neutral conversation invites creative intelligence. Rancor and incivility tactics of the cabal work against us all, for they bury information in noise to use time as a weapon. The cabal have more time to waste, for they are already directed in some valuable way and need only repel valid issues from their territory.

Consensus in nature

Even prehistoric creatures were ruled by a natural consensus. Even bacteria are effected consensus elsewhere.

Consensus within a person

There is a growth period of an article (on the wiki in a subpage with special template warnings) during which it's author can take weeks and weeks in solitude.

It has been noted that software applications "designed by committee" do many things poorly, whereas applications designed by a single visionary which can do one thing very well. a poor ref (it's a wiki) Open source software has a saying by Larry Wall. It goes something to the effect: You have a choice when you make a knowledge product. It can do a lot of things poorly, or it can do one thing very well. The committee does the former, and the visionary the latter.

The consensus effect

Consensus as a widely employed natural mechanism becomes a concept quite usefully employed as a teaching tool by way of analogy between the different areas of application.

While the wiki develops there is a tumult not so much in article development and admin, but in "the one policy" or "body politic", the "one being" that performs the never ending macro development.

SInce this one being is actually many persons writing the (in effect one) policy, (the analog in the individual is the author's many types of style) what we need is for them (or us) to please finish it in such a way that it is acceptable for everyone so that all future references to policy are clear and effective, and have an equal quality and tone throughout, and an efficient distribution and lucid representation of data, with just the right amount of repetition to satisfy a balance between a paper document and an HTML document, a balance between the need for a compact, expert's special lingo and a common lingo, etc.

The wiki is leery of experts and anyone with a personal interest in their topic. Experts are [[WP:experts are scum|too emotionally involved in discussions aiming at consensus. Those with a personal interest in their topic are assumed to be tempted to violate the conflict of interest. The common ground for both of these policies is that we live in a primitive society driven by animal emotions and money. I think the COI policy is in error where it "discourages those with a personal interest from editing or discussing."

Construction material

Of course, a new user who gets treated roughly can easily interpret that as Cabalism, especially if there seems to be no appropriate forum for these complaints. What criticism is 'constructive' is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Example of collaboration, collusion, trolls, cabals

Since the wiki can get built without policy such as "how to format talk pages", much policy can be ignored, and the wiki can get built in a patchwork fashion with inconsistent policies. This would not be the "tower of babel" that Abelarde? claims wikipedia is; instead it would engender bands of roving experts. In reality though, their are authoritative leaders, and they can block users and delete pages. But what happens, see, is the police come around and tag an article for deletion based on failure to follow guidelines and policy.

So in effect, the original territoriality which drove out those who could not understand or had trouble understanding, or felt a heavy prejudice or had a PTS disorder or were simply rebels, or any number of categories of folks who would have liked to have made there own version of understanding, that created the police. It also created the need for teachers. Personal teachers who "rehab" by personal tutorials, personal visits, personal discussions of any sort, these two were created by people who do not choose to follow policy and run afoul of it, either because they don't read, can't read or policy is poorly written. (But I contradict myself when I think more people should edit "by committee". No I don't, only the confident and strong who are rejected by the cabal are the losses I speak of. And there are many, I'm sure.)

So there has to be a point of diminishing returns on the policy "use this version or die", and WP seems to have taken the stanse "give widest possible birth" make there be no rules and let those who are most determined be the editors and fight for there position and be goaded night and day by detractors and wanna be's. That will drive them to there policy. There will be no shortage of ideas." Wrong. Friction and frustration are not the climate for creative thinking. Peace. Quiet is. Inventors no this. Thinkers know this. Wikipedia might just want a brute force explosion or expansion period. Later on they will initiate the selection of their editors, calling them by user name. Take a dump and delete the toxins.

In reality, policy does not matter, just like the thoughts of the author largely don't matter, because the article under construction swells with brainstorm, millions of fish eggs, then gets carved with hammers "jillions" of and chisels and shards and dust. Maybe a few pieces are glued back on later. No one really knows. Policy is the blind leading the blind. none of these thoughts matter. There is no prescription for the challenges of life. No philosophy works. The only happy folks are the ones who strive day in and day out, in peace of course, to provide for their day to day needs as best they can without resorting to dramatic levels of desperation.

You will find in WT:consensus the gamut of the wiki conspiracy theories, all of which are, by definition, true in the mind of the user, and therefore, by definition are true to a certain extent in the spirit of the body of users.

The mother of all discussions is at WP:consensus. All discussion pages are very telling as to the true inner nature of the mental works that produce the surface pages — the present presentation. The same pre-editing occurs in carefully spoken words. Protocol (diplomacy) is important in formal settings (and, I will argue, in formal stages), speaking "so that it fits with policy". Therein lies the rub for discussions concerning policy.

The purpose of a discussion is to achieve consensus around an "improvement". An edit is a change. A change is an action. An action requires a specific. The specific improvement is the idea and its wording. If the idea meets consensus, and if the discussion of the idea was clean (not cluttered with personal remarks), there will be no need for another discussion concerning the idea's wording and placement within the article.

Policy hawking is all very good and necessary in it's own era or phase of evolution. As of 2009 policy hawks understandably make general and personal remarks intended not only to protect the current state of the article they worked very at producing, but also to protect it's future state from any more "intrusions". When an article becomes "turf", then territoriality and attachment lead to sentiments in the hawk that result in words and phrases on discussion pages that speak of outside persons (unknown editors) in terms of their powers (of observation and ideation), and their motives, and speak (truthfully) of inside persons in a vague we— the previous parties of earlier discussions — a phantom of their imagination.

Many of these hawks are great persons, highly concerned about what they are doing: not only do their debates cobble together an article, but they talk about WP:consensus a lot — so much so, that the policy article they protect remains a patchwork, tallying the result of debate ideas. It reads "fairly" to the protector, and "confusingly" for all practical applicators. Only readers with special space-time-lenses on can understand such a patchwork of ideas. In other words, they have to leave the article and read the discussion pages. This is from Wikipedia:Link#Overlinking_and_underlinking:

Some editors feel that the lead section is a special case. On the one hand it might be desirable to have fewer links in the lead section than in the body of the text; while some links make it easier to scan a longer lead by highlighting key terms, too many make it harder. On the other hand, in technical articles that use many uncommon terms in the introduction, a higher-than-usual link density in the lead section may be necessary to facilitate understanding; but, if possible, try giving an informal explanation in the lead, avoiding using too many technical terms until later in the article: see point 5 of WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal, and WP:Make technical articles accessible.

Currently the ratio of good ideas (discussed, but not accepted into the article) to bad ideas (questioned, in the article, but stuck there due to political quagmire) is very low. I am addressing this here.Good article stewards know their enemy is ignorance and cease to ignore ideas and begin to answer previously unheard questions on the discussion pages.

Personal remarks on discussion pages are the epitome of turf. In the worst case scenario a contribution of an outsider is quickly sized-up by the insider, and there settles in the mind of the insider a primitive "knowing". Then and there the future of the article is determined by their own group not that "other". Discussion pages would only serve as an alarm to disturb the insiders from their slumber to perchance gaze at the confusing, unusable treasure. When disturbed they revisit issues and replaying past debates in a stuck interpretation. Words and ideas to them mean might be considered for a moment, but then a person on the inside is conjured up. They fantasize ahead of time what the consensus will be because they know the personalities of the participators who will probably show up.

Wisdom is in the widest possible collaboration. One might one day witness the size of the world in an encyclopedia.

If I may paint a vision of the future of Wikipedia articles, it would be this. Each time I want to escape to Wikipedia and land on a page that I thought I knew, it is a new landscape. It is like the snowfall of a Christmas morning. The hawks present is a cold nest of sticks high overhead, pelted by winds of nature. The world's gift is the sticks of random flakes not melted away, and creating a landscape viewed through a window in a living room with a little fireplace crackling with warmth from real wood. The Santa Clause would be the phrase "Live the present (gift) of life — now the ever new avenue I never know." An ever-changing presentation of the page should be the gifts from around the world and around the clock, year 'round. Perhaps one day all good ideas will stick somewhere, and the art of breaking up grown articles into growing articles will be fun and lovely.

The difference between the project and main namespace then, (and even more pronounced at WT:consensus) illustrates the way responsibility is a voluntary pain:

• Policy can be blissfully ignored by contributors to the main namespace, and without consequence for their contribution.
• Guidelines are a pain because they beg an attention to a more rational philosophy that tries to suite all articles. They hammer out an aesthetic based upon an attempt at an efficient answer to the clammer of all articles, whereas each article is free to attend only to it's own aesthetic style desired.. Beauty (aesthetic) is a foundational pillar of life in general, and philosophy in particular.
• The highest values from a popular (a reader) perspective would be the main namespace followed closely by "portal" and category namespace. Few care if you are a MediaWiki template or variable guru, or write policy.

Temptation to attachment afflicts all namespaces, but especially project namespaces.

the part about "objective consciousness" as concerns the consensus process: Wikipedia is nothing more than a collaboration process. One's top priority could be non-encyclopedic, but not non-collaborative, since all my writing is voluntary. While collaboration is the only way to peace, the only way to collaborate to peace is to first get objective consciousness. That means, that the process of collaboration only works if one is like a non-emotional Vulcan. Now imagine a Vulcan having to walk away from it's screen. Ha Ha LOL. D'ya know the definition of thug? Its physical retaliation for mental imagery. So ergo sum latte, collaborative software is only offenceless trolling. Trolls are the truth of the wiki.

Personal opinion

All editors that show even a single violation of civility should be banned from adminship.

In my opinion, all policy pages should be locked, and there should be as many levels or more of administration as there are namespaces. WP:copyrights is locked. Who edits it?. Hawks, the few hovering above, eating small doves below, would turn into doves, inviting and expelling policy wonks as easily as deleting an article. The overall pain might be much less, and fewer contributors would melt away from Wikipedia decrying totalitarianism because they would never need to know unless they were interested. The whole complication of discussion page would turn into this: those responsible for the article would be the ones most likely to rescue any long unanswered question, and they could do so with the dignified authority that they deserve, and not with the stumbling block of sentiments they now suffer. When you are them, who has time to proofread an animal territorial response to innocent contributor who barged into an unlocked room? Articles could be owned by a consensus oriented team for a term. Fresh perspectives would help proofread. Project-wide knowledge would help write better links and create a tighter data hierarchy.

An evolved Wikipedia features discussion pages filled with ideas and words about the article. Personal remarks are on user pages, not discussion pages.