On Crowners and Consensus

This came about in the Websites Clean-up thread (link to start of this topic (concerns question 2), link to post that convinced me to make this topic (concerns question 1)), and the discussion may be getting off topic over there (hence this thread).

I'm not sure how to start this or how to segue into it, so I'm just gonna start with the questions I'm trying to get to and work from there (numbered for sake of referencing them):

1. On a crowner, does "no consensus to act" (e.g. "no consensus to cut") equate with "consensus to do nothing" (e.g. "consensus to keep")?
2. Imagine a scenario where Page A and Page B host tropeable works (such as videos, fanfics, or original short stories). Moreover, both are works pages in Website/ and both have at least one problem in common (e.g. they aren't themselves tropeable works). Further, a crowner already decided what should be done with Page A. Does that mean that decision also applies to Page B? In this scenario, imagine that the pages have different problems but they have at least one problem that is common between them.

It goes without saying, but there might be wiseguys in the crowd: These questions go beyond semantics because this is a question of actionable decisions, and not actually hypothetical. This is something that has come up in the Websites Clean-up Project, and I think this can be extended to other projects where crowners are used for the sake of agreeing to clean something on the wiki in a particular way. In the Real Life Section Maintenance thread (as an example of another relevant thread), some people will insist on putting tropes on the crowner simply because it's similar to a trope that's been NRLEP'ed (pronounced "enrep" or "nirlep" in my brain), while others will say there needs to be more of an argument than that before putting something on the crowner.

For the first question, I would say that they are not equivalent. If people cannot come to an agreement, then they don't agree, and so if they cannot agree "to act," then they don't necessarily agree "to do nothing." They simply "do nothing" because they happened to be unable to agree, or the deadline came up, or any other number of reasons.

A salient difference (concerning this issue on crowners), as I've come to understand it, is that "no consensus" items can be re-evaluated later whereas "consensus" means "we're done with this." This has happened at least twice on the Real Life Section Maintenance thread, once with Not So Different (most recently in April 2017) and also with Safe, Sane, and Consensual. You can look it up on Keep Real Life Examples. Not So Different has been brought up multiple times, and Safe, Sane, and Consensual did not have consensus to cut the first time it went through the thread but then did get consensus to keep the second time through the crowner.

For the second question, I would say that pages (or sections, or names, or whathaveyou) with different problems should be looked at on their own merits. Just because there's one common problem between two pages does not, imo, mean that they are equivalent and that the decision for Page A necessarily applies to Page B.

I concede that there's a bit of nuance here. I'll use No New Stock Phrases and It's All About Me as an example for what I mean, but it's just meant to illustrate the nuance I'm referring to. If the consensus concerns a group classification itself, then that consensus would apply to everything within that classification. So, if we were to build consensus via crowner for no longer using stock phrases for the titles of new tropes, then we would necessarily be making a decision for all new tropes. However, if we were to build consensus via crowner for changing the name of It's All About Me with the reason being "it's a stock phrase," then we would not be making a decision on all tropes titled after a stock phrase.

1. A "no consensus" decision entails that nothing happens.
2. Frankly, my sentiment is to ask "Why do you think that this page is hurting the site?" first and foremost.
   1. My second sentiment is that "If A was treated in a particular way B should be as well" tends to be wrong in two different ways. One, there is often a critical difference between A and B that justifies them being treated differently. Or the decision on A was wrong to begin with.

edited 27th Aug '17 1:11:46 AM by SeptimusHeap

For the Real Life maintenance thread, we do have a policy to discuss each individual page. Often, even if they seem similar, they might have details that make a significant difference that might not be obvious at first glance. Or the section could simply have been cut because it created problems, rather than any inherent problem with it, in which case a page being similar simply isn't an argument unless it creates (actually creates, not hypothetically) similar problems. Discussing the pages is necessary to figure those details out.

If two decisions are different from what looks to be the same basis, that's probably a good cause to re-examine the first decision. People arguing emotionally just because they like or dislike a certain thing certainly happens all the time, and that's not conducive to consistent decisions based on our actual policies.

Except each page isn't being discussed. Just in the last few days, someone nominated Right Through the Wall and Right Through His Pants as "sex tropes" and put them on the crowner immediately. They recieved no discussion whatsoever, but both are currently standing at 8-or-9 to 1-or-2 to be cut. There was no evidence offered that the RL sections were problematic, no discussion at all. Just a kneejerk response that they're "sex tropes" and therefore cuttable.

edited 7th Sep '17 6:12:11 PM by Madrugada

They weren't discussed probably because people either didn't notice it, or didn't care enough to discuss it even though they did notice it.

edited 8th Sep '17 2:07:39 AM by AnotherDuck