Forum:Must we vote on everything?

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Sterile asked a good question. Must we vote on everything?

Yes

• But only I get to vote. --User:Theautocrat/Sig 22:03, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe

• --^{Ask me about your mother} 20:57, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
• Undecided: ^theist 21:11, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment This sort of thing where you can declare your position in a category and then explain it is useful, but voting is time consuming and useless. Otherwise the site would require switching officially to democracy and a system of figuring out how to impliment it. Voting as it is now basically produces consensus quite quickly, but the whole "mobocracy" thing seems to imply that when people are in the minority, they have a gods given right to bitch and moan about it constantly rather than rolling over and just accepting it. And woe betide the individual who declares a conensus reached before everyone has had their say. So we either ditch voting entirely and just proceed kind of as is but without everyone being asked to formally pick something, or we ditch the whole hapazard approach set up a proper governing system. ^theist 21:11, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we have far too many people to vote fairly and conclusively on anything but the most major of changes to the wiki or its policy. ^theist 21:17, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Can you repeat the question?

• What was the middle one again? Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 21:36, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but first we need to vote on the list of possible answers

• DogP^{Marmite Patrol} 17:26, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

No. We only need to vote on things where we need to establish a consensus

• --Bob^{Bring back the hat!} 21:08, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
• ListenerX^TalkerX Our traditional approach to these controversies, I believe, has been that we need a vote only if something is generating enough controversy to cause a wheel-war. 21:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
• Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 22:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC) Voting sometimes helps get the discussion going, such as on the discussion page where we talked about vandal bin policy. It wasn't decided by vote, but voting helped us organize the debate and kept it civil.

No, just on this

• DickTurpis (talk) 21:17, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment

Well, some things perhaps not however you need to remember that some (all) of us get a little worked up by unilateral moves. Ace^{of Spades} 20:59, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it probably comes down to how we respond. I miss the old Eudora feature that delayed sending mail if it detected a bit of anger in it. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:06, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

That is getting into creepy Orwell territory. ListenerX^TalkerX 21:07, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

But more often than not, unilateral moves tend to get things done. Can you imagine what it would be like if Nx got everyone to OK each and every little change that he makes? Seriously. In fact, Nx, I suggest you do this for a month and see how long it takes for people to get annoyed and for the Wiki's development to grind to a complete halt. ^theist 21:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

That is why town hall style direct democracy has always failed. ListenerX^TalkerX 21:16, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

It works at small scales at least, but now we're getting too big. So have we reached the point where we need to either switch to dictatorship with accountability or proportional representation? ^theist 21:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

It is a thorny issue we face with this. Ace^{of Spades} 21:21, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

If the current system proves untenable with the expanded membership, we can probably resolve at least some conflicts by installing a formal framework for voluntary ad hoc arbitration. ListenerX^TalkerX 21:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I like idea that people can get an idea and run with it. We just need to differentiate between "This looks a bit odd" and "omg this stops me from using the site" situations, and respond accordingly. --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:28, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

(EC)Exactly. We covered this very slightly with Debate:Dealing_with_community_growth_at_RationalWiki, does this need to be ressurected before it takes over the Saloon Bar? Or can we cover it in the new forums? I'd like to see them get some traffic to test out how good they are for dealing with larger discussions. ^theist 21:30, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, seriously. Can we shift this to the forum, I'm on a less that dapper connection and the SB is taking ages to load up. ^theist 21:38, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I started a thread: Forum:This_site_is_growing_fat --^{Ask me about your mother} 21:39, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

To "shift this to the forum" means cutting and pasting all the stuff above, which saves SB BW and lets the conversation continue over there. Just leave a brief note that it was moved. Starting another separate discussion just makes a bigger mess. Although, I guess that forum thread isn't really this topic, it's something else. ħuman 02:18, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. Hope I didn't make too big of a mess of it. The history up to this point is probably still over at the saloon bar.Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Also thanks for the "history" link. ħuman 22:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)