Superconsensus in crowners discussion

if newcomers don't feel welcome contributing to cleanup threads, we need to either find and address the cultural issues that are causing that, or acknowledge that there are no cultural problems and those people are creating a problem for themselves that doesn't exist. either way, the solution is not to continue allow people to control the decision making without ever participating in discussion at all.

Like this also would absolutely be used by people to complain if an option was kept. Which were seeing now.

what part of this strikes you as complaining about decisions not going a particular way instead of trying to fix a systemic problem with the way we administrate our democratic decisions?

People are always going to be wary when first entering an unfamiliar process, especially one with a large culture around itself. It's not something we can "fix" or "address".

Plus again it would be just creating an insular community where only a couple of people have power over the entire site?

so option 2 then?

like, yall are just way too eager to just throw up your hands and go "there's nothing we can do about this, better continue allowing our decision making process to be subverted".

h o w. i am legitimately not understanding this position.

Edited by ChloeJessica on Sep 3rd 2022 at 11:15:13 AM

Yeah, I'm not sure why it'd make things more insular, but I do think Mir is referring to the exact problem I mentioned before; people have gotten upset and called people out for voting "wrongly" on a crowner that didn't go their way.

That's what they were referring to before, not that this discussion is complaining about decisions, but that there's cases in the past of people already doing that exact thing. It's the same thing I brought up before. People do occasionally get too invested in these decisions to the point of accusing anyone who voted differently of bad faith tactics, such as spite voting or using socks.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 3rd 2022 at 2:21:07 PM

Yes. That's what I meant. Like if we're problems with that now when it is Anonymous. We're absolutely going to see that increase if it wasn't.

and... why exactly wouldn't those people be dealt with exactly like people who harass people elsewhere on the site? this is not an insurmountable problem and i don't know why you're speaking about it as if it is.

X4 This is the general thing I've seen happen:

Thread forms, with a small group of dedicated users contributing -> thread gets long and develops its own jargon/rules that aren't explained in the pinned post -> new people post on the thread, get criticized for not using the correct jargon/breaking the unspoken rules -> new people stop posting, feeling unwelcome -> issues comes up that requires a crowner; the people who didn't feel welcome posting vote on it -> if their option loses, thread regulars complain that people outside their group shouldn't be voting since they're mot posting

Edited by Orbiting on Sep 3rd 2022 at 2:28:28 PM

Personally I don't think it's an insurmountable problem or even necessarily a common one, but I do think it's why the current system exists the way it does and that it may unintentionally make people less likely to vote with their true feelings if they're afraid of retribution. I'm not saying these things definitely be the case or that they're problems we can actually take the blame for if such a thing does happen... Just that these outcomes are very possible and I'm sure that the anonymous crowner system was originally designed to prevent problems.

Then again, we have to keep in mind that the OG crowners also got hundreds of votes and that the site used to allow anonymous participation in general. It's also possible that the system is what it is because making it non-anonymous would be too difficult or record too much info.

you know what those sound like to me? cultural problems that can be addressed.

Edited by ChloeJessica on Sep 3rd 2022 at 11:27:44 AM

Eh, trust me I've been trying, I've argued a lot with people on the NRLEP thread for that exact behavior and the only reason it stopped wasn't because people stopped trying to crusade against democracy, but because the mods eventually got sick of the derails. The culture didn't change, people just don't want to be thumped or banned.

Public speaking, and social anxiety more broadly, is one of the most common human fears on the planet. Presenting a problem or explanation to a group of passionate specialists is inherently intimidating to any newcomer, and the only solution is to reduce the load of participation so that newcomers have a reason to be increasingly involved and become comfortable with established processes.

If their experience with clean-up threads is that someone immediately demands they explain themselves, that does not encourage participation or demonstrate welcoming site culture. "We'll just fix the entire site culture or The Dissenter Is Always Wrong" is itself a step away from healthy site culture.

i am becoming very irate at yalls utter insistence that this is an unfixable problem (not you Jay). im out for a while.

I don't think lack of participation is an unfixable problem. But I do think that your proposal would be actively detrimental to the goal.

I still think that this whole discussion is derailing from the original idea and that it's such a different beast from the concept of "loosening superconsensus rules" that it warrants an entirely separate thread... and that we should probably move on for now and cool down a little so if such a thread gets made we're not still all tense. (How did we even get on this topic? I slept and came back and suddenly we were discussing anonymous voting...)

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 3rd 2022 at 2:39:41 PM

I mean, like I've said several times now, the entire reason there's even a discussion of lowering the consensus requirement is because of suspicious anonymous voting leading to questionable failures of consensus, which makes me personally inclined to think the former is the real problem.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 3rd 2022 at 4:09:44 AM

Do you have any proof that people are indeed acting in bad faith instead of genuinely disagreeing?

No, we don't. This is the NRLEP maximalists trying to change the rules because they want to make it easier to cut real life examples.

I think that's a bit of a generalization. This isn't only about RL examples as I said in the OP—this also affects TRS and Wiki Talk decisions.

For the record, I am currently neutral about whether to go through with the consensus change.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Sep 3rd 2022 at 5:56:57 AM

Those two points - that we don't have any proof one way or another, and that it would affect lots of other parts of the site - is exactly why I think the superconsensus debate is misguided when the fundamental problem is anonymous voting, which is objectively poisoning the discussion when it comes to the NRLEP thread.

i can't speak for anyone else, but i personally will commit to reducing my complaints about votes not going the way i would prefer. i will also devote more consideration to whether a trope would benefit from a simple cleanup rather than the full scorched earth process. these are not contingent on whether we ultimately change the way crowners work or not; they are attempts to rectify behavior that has been correctly called out as problematic and that needs to change regardless of whether anything else does.

but i am not here simply to attempt to backdoor remove real life examples from the wiki and i strongly resent the implications and outright statements that i am. i am here because i genuinely think there is a problem with our democratic systems being subverted by people who refuse to cooperate with them fully. this problem is at its most evident in the NRLEP thread but is by no means limited to it.

i have made errors in judgment in my wiki work, of course. im a human being. but i have never operated in bad faith and most of you have seen me around enough to know that. i want what i think is best for the wiki. if you disagree with me about what that is, fine. that's your right. but if you can't extend enough goodwill to give my motivations the benefit of the doubt, i do not see how i can have a productive discussion with you.

crossposted from the NRLEP criteria thread because it's relevant to both discussions.

And if there are any drive-by voters reading this, reach out and talk to us. We want to hear from you so that we can work on solutions together.

I am not particularly active in the RL cleanup so I will refrain from commenting on that angle, but I will admit to not seeing how the 2:1 consensus rule fail the other parts of the wiki, so statements such as "subverting democratic systems" come across as hyperbolic. TRS in particular has a reputation of of "too few people making decisions that affect entire tropes"; lowering the ratio seems like it would attract more of that kind of thinking.