Jump to content

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/When there is no consensus either way

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Requests for comment

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Isaacl (talk | contribs) at 22:55, 11 February 2024 (→‎Summing up: if referring to summary statement, as alluded to, don't like the framing of the question). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

When editors are unable to form a consensus either way about including or excluding a particular fact in a Wikipedia article, should they default to including or excluding that fact? (This question is not about living persons.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[]

The story

Template:Box-rImagine that an editor recently created a new article. The subject is obviously notable, and all of the information in the article is correctly cited to an appropriate reliable source. All editors agree that all of the information in the article is accurate, verifiable, and neutrally phrased.

However, editors currently disagree about whether one particular fact in the new article should be in this article at all. There is no dispute over the wording of the sentence that presents this fact; the dispute is specifically and completely about inclusion or exclusion of the fact at all. (The exact nature of the potentially unwanted information is unimportant, except for the fact that the disputed material has nothing to do with any living person, so Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons does not apply.)

As normal editing and discussions on the talk pages were unable to resolve the question, an RFC was held on the article's talk page, which produced a large number of thoughtful and policy-based comments from a large number of editors. However, at the end, the two sides were equally balanced. At the end of this discussion:

  • Both sides had equally strong arguments based on policies, guidelines, common sense, and Wikipedia's values.
  • Both sides also had equal numbers of supporters.

After considering both the equal strength of the arguments and the equal numbers, the closing admin felt there was no option except to declare a true case of "no consensus" in the closing summary.

Obviously, if editors had formed a consensus to include this fact, then they would include it, and if they had formed a consensus to exclude it, then they would exclude it. But since they were unable to form a consensus, they are uncertain what to do. These editors are now asking you: When there is no consensus to include information, shouldn't it be removed, because policy A says to remove it? But when there is no consensus to remove information, shouldn't it be retained, because policy B says to retain it?

The Fine Print:

  • The dispute centers on Wikipedia:Editorial judgement. Some editors believe the article is better off including it, and other editors believe the article is better off excluding it.
  • There are no policies dictating The Right Answer™ for whether this particular fact needs to be in this article.
  • The fact in question is already cited to a reliable source, so WP:CHALLENGE (which is for uncited material only) does not apply.
  • The objections cannot be solved through copyediting. No amount of re-wording is necessary, wanted, or helpful. Everyone agrees that it's already a very nicely worded sentence. The problem is not the wording. The problem is that half of them have good reasons for removing that fact from this article, and the other half of them have good reasons for keeping that fact in the article. If the fact is to be kept in the article, then everyone agrees that this sentence would be a very good way to present the fact.
  • The sentence in question was added in the first version of the article, and it has been disputed ever since. All editors agree that there is no "stable version" or "status quo" version. There are only disputed versions available, in which some editors remove it and the other editors restore it.
    • Also, WP:STATUSQUO (go read it!) only applies during a discussion or other dispute resolution process; it doesn't say what to do when dispute resolution processes have ended.
  • You don't need to personally evaluate whether the reasons editors gave are any good (in your opinion) or if the editors made policy-based arguments. The admin already did that part and determined that the strength of the arguments are exactly equal.
  • The article does not qualify for deletion (the subject is notable, the text is not a copyvio, it is not an attack page, etc.), so you can't avoid the problem by trying to get rid of the whole article.
  • "Have another discussion!" will not result in a different outcome. Editors want your advice for what to do now, not in some magical future when their views have changed.

The problem

Template:Box-r

Usually, when article content is disputed, it's easy for editors to reach an agreement ("consensus") about what to do. In rare instances, even after extensive discussion, editors are unable to make a decision. Several policies and guidelines provide advice about the default actions in such cases. For example, contested ==External links== are removed, and an Wikipedia:Articles for deletion discussion ending in no consensus results in the article being kept.

We have attempted to create a central list of what to do in cases of no consensus. However, in the course of doing this, we have inadvertently created a conflict between two policies. One policy says content without consensus is usually kept, and the other says content without consensus should be removed. According to our policy on conflicting written rules, we need to figure out what the best practice is and make all of the relevant advice pages match the right thing to do. If we are able to reach a consensus about what the best practice is, then we will later be able to make specific proposals about which page(s) to change and what those changes should be.

(NB: We don't need you to tell us what the policies currently say, because we already know what they say, and – since they conflict with each other – at least one of them is currently wrong. Just tell us what you believe the best practice is.)

How to respond

Template:Box-r

Please add your viewpoint in the #Responses section.

  • In this discussion, it's more important to think about common sense, practicalities, and Wikipedia's values than about which line of policy or guideline you'd quote in such an RFC. The goal for this discussion is to figure out what editors believe the best practice is, in principle, when there is no consensus about whether to include or exclude non-BLP-related material in a particular article.
  • The policy What Wikipedia is not says "the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected...Furthermore, policies and guidelines themselves may be changed to reflect evolving consensus." This RFC is trying to figure out what the current community consensus is. Once we know what the current community consensus is, we will be prepared to accurately document the community's best practice in the written rules.
  • If you decide to cite a policy, guideline, essay, or other page that matches your view, please read it first, to make sure your memory of the page matches its current contents. (Previous discussions have seen editors linking pages that don't actually say what they thought it said.)
  • The key and immutable point is that there is no consensus. Responses that reject this premise (e.g., "I need to know what the arguments were, because one side always has better arguments, so the admin was wrong to say the reasons each side gave were exactly equal in strength" or "The side with the stronger argument should get what they want") will not help us answer the real question.

Discussion

Do you have questions? Do you have ideas? Do you want to share some thoughts with other editors while you contemplate possible #Responses? Post them here. RFCs operate under the normal rules for discussions. If you have meta-comments about the RFC (e.g., Why is it happening on this page? Can I notify page X? Why didn't you give me specific examples?), then please post those on the talk page.

I'm having trouble making up my mind. I think that it's best for Wikipedia to include more information. If people are looking for encyclopedic information (broadly defined), I'd like them to be able to find it here. However, I worry about certain kinds of claims, such as health claims ("One study showed that Wonderpam™ kills cancer cells in a petri dish") or geopolitical disputes ("Blue Country says that Orange Country smells bad"). Usually, I think it would be okay. If the material is obviously bad, we'll form a consensus against it. However, every now and again, we make really odd decisions. Of course, those decisions tend not to last very long, so perhaps it doesn't matter that much if disputed content is included until a consensus is formed against it.

OTOH, the approach we take to WP:BLPs is to remove contentious material until there is a consensus to include it, and why shouldn't we take a similar level of care for other subjects?

Colin's comment about not preserving the old is a good one. WP:QUO is a fine approach during a dispute, to the extent that it discourages edit warring, but it's bad to extend it beyond that point. I've been catching up on my watchlist after years of neglect, and it has been discouraging to find articles editing 25 times over 25 months, without even a single sentence being added or removed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[]

REMOVE. I'm going to equate "contentious" with "damaging". If the information is "damaging," meaning that it would harm a person, place, thing -- it should be removed. Wikipedia is one of the largest databases in the world, we have a duty to do no damage. Lives and livelihoods are affected by our decisions. We are not a news source so contentious information can be learned about via news sources. It is not our role to be that news source. SO, unless the "damaging" information is combined with a criminal conviction -- IT STAYS OUT. Slacker13 (talk) 31 January 2024


It's been my general impression that this is what a maintenance phase looks like. We get oodles of smol gnomings as editors flit around fixing whatever is in their maintenance tasklist, and every once in awhile an article will undergo a complete rewrite over the course of weeks, without much action taking place in the space between.
My sample may be biased, and my memory might be faulty, but on my watchlist I very rarely see an edit that adds one or a few sentences of sourced information to an established article. Creation and repair seem to be the major spheres of mainspace editorial activity, with expansion and updating barely visible in the distance. Folly Mox (talk) 02:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
It's been like that for years, and has been getting worse. Many if not most of our current editors hardly ever add text. Some can't be bothered to find references, some are unconfident of their abilities to write sentences in English, and so on. Plus most are now on mobiles, where I certainly wouldn't want to do long edits. We should stop encouraging people to write new articles, & instead promote improving existing ones. Not sure what this has to do with your issue here, though. Johnbod (talk) 03:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
A lot of articles aren't changing anyway, so why would we ever want a bias towards the old version? The old version is happening too often anyway. If someone is attempting to (in their opinion) improve an article, maybe we should encourage that. Instead of excluding by default or including by default, maybe we should try the newest approach by default, or the least experienced editor by default. Really: If I can't, despite all of my wiki-friends, despite knowing the core policies so well, despite having written a non-trivial fraction of their contents, despite (as all my wiki-friends will agree ;-)) almost always being right, manage to scare up a consensus for my view, maybe the newbie deserves to "win". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Honestly, I kind of like that idea: bias towards change in order to counter natural ossification. Feels unimplementable in practice though. Assuming we're still in the hypothetical here where there's a true no consensus on strength of argument or numbers, do we count up the total active editing days of both sides and award the lower total the victory? Does the newest editor present in the discussion grant an automatic win like a golden snitch? Folly Mox (talk) 13:46, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I was thinking just then about a dispute as being a 1:1 thing, with the other voices not exactly being participants in it, but you're right that some big disputes have a group-vs-group dynamic. The newest editor rule would tempt people to engage in socking, but there are probably ways around that (e.g., the newest editor as of the day before the dispute started, the most recently extended-confirmed editor, the side with the most voters who have between one and five years' experience, etc).
We could also have a rotating golden snitch tiebreaker: A dispute can apply for a tiebreaker decision, and a randomly selected admin is stuck with making the decision. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
If the old text has been there a long time, there is a MOS:RETAIN-style argument that if it was all that wrong someone would have changed it. Rfc's on most pages only attract a tiny fraction of our editors, often those most invested with a particular POV. The long-term wisdom of the crowds will often produce a better answer. Johnbod (talk) 17:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
There's equally a Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia#Extant for 10+ years argument that we can't rely on people to have already fixed it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I'm reading this and thinking, when did I propose that we should completely reverse one of the defaults from retaining the status quo to be to adopt the new. I then read my text below and see that when I summarised our Editing policy it looked like I was proposing that. I wasn't really. I was saying that policy says we should try to work with and improve the new, but it also says that if you can't then you can excise it. It doesn't say what we should do if we disagree on whether the text can be fixed enough to be retained. But it does say that we do encourage change and for editors to try to incorporate change. What I was really saying is I think we should drop the "default to the old", because that doesn't encourage change, and I wasn't proposing replacing that with "default to the new". I can see problems with that default too. It is swinging too much the other way. I thought we should be more neutral about whether changes were better than what we had, on a project that does indeed encourage change.
MOS:RETAIN is absolutely nothing to do with "if it was all that wrong, someone would have changed it". It is about preventing regional English variety disputes. Because we always get random folk coming along and noticing that an article has spelled something "wrong" and "fixing" it. It is entirely a dispute-prevention and dispute-settling policy. Per WP:UPPERCASE, the words MOS:RETAIN sound like we have a MOS guideline that values keeping longstanding text. We don't.
I disagree with the idea that generally speaking text on Wikipedia demonstrates its goodness through age. Also the logic that says we should default to keeping the old because if the old was wrong, someone would have changed it, is, em, fundamentally flawed. You've got a rule that makes it hard to change, and thus a tendency to keep the crap. Most of our readers don't have the knowledge or inclination to fix the faults on Wikipedia. I can tell that because when I look at some random article, I can see absolute nonsense text added by some student class three years ago, on the assumption that "the wisdom of the crowd" would fix all their mistakes. Or I can read a barely literate lead that hasn't changed much for years despite being so painful to read you want to have a lie down after. Wikipedia is very much a work in progress and we absolutely shouldn't have a policy that discourages progress.
On the other axis, of inclusion vs exclusion, there are just too many areas I think where there are clear arguments in favour of defaulting to exclude (certainly BLP but also biomedical and science). There may be some areas where editors think it really isn't an important enough topic to care, but I think mostly when editors get passionate about Wikipedia not misleading or misinforming our readers, then they tend towards exclusion. Exclusion is also a good default because long term, if something does become important or accepted, then we can always include it later. Whereas, as we have seen, once material is in Wikipedia, it can be hard to get it out, with people giving entirely non-policy based reasons like that it has been there a long time so must be ok. -- Colin°Talk 10:51, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[]
You can certainly find a lot of "absolute nonsense text added by some student class three years ago", though it rarely sustains being completely wrong over any length of text, but then no-one is likely to mind in the least if you remove it. That is not what we are talking about here. Johnbod (talk) 18:47, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Johnbod, I know we are only discussing contested text here. But the claim was that somehow our existing text is obviously better (and thus should be defaulted to) than any text (or absence) that some new contributor had offered simply because it has been here a long time. I think there are no end of examples of why that is not only wrong but also wrongheaded on a project that is based on "What we have here is not good enough, please help us improve it" model. If editors were more likely to make the text worse than make it better, we'd just lock all the pages and sit back and enjoy reading what people wrote in the past. -- Colin°Talk 08:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I don't see anybody claiming anything like that. Johnbod (talk) 17:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Maybe not here, but we do see that belief in practice. Some editors revert copyediting because the new version is "only" equally good as the old version. Many editors incorrectly believe that WP:STATUSQUO is a policy requirement and that it requires them to prefer the old version over the new version if there's a dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Ok, but "not an improvement" is a valid reason to revert. Where there is an actual change some editors are just mistrustful of new/different material, especially if not referenced (or worse, not changing the old ref immediately after). Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Is it really a valid reason to revert? If that's being used as a polite euphemism for "makes the article worse", then it's a valid reason, but if you believe that the change literally makes no difference to the overall article quality, I don't think you should be reverting it. Why would you waste your time making no difference to the article's quality? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Johnbod, you wrote "If the old text has been there a long time, there is a MOS:RETAIN-style argument that if it was all that wrong someone would have changed it." Surely that is explicitly favouring old text merely for being old, on the assumption that many eyes have reviewed it and found it acceptable. But it assumes that otherwise, if someone found it unacceptable, that they would overcome the inertia required to actually edit it to something better (for example, they may need to go look up sources, which they may find they don't have access to, learn how to cite them, and so on), or remove it, and then manage to get their edit retained rather than reverted by someone assuming the old text was fine because it is old.
Many editors may be considering situations where they supported existing text because they wrote it or are imagining situations where they have come into conflict with someone removing or changing text they wrote. Maybe they aren't so strongly remembering the text they improved and didn't get any conflict over because whoever wrote that is not here or because it was obviously better. I wonder if there is a bias in our recollection that assumes other people are making bad edits, rather than realising that to everyone else, we are the other people.
Don't you see a conflict between editors favouring existing text and our fundamentals which are that we want editors to change what's here because we hope you can make it better. Anyone coming to Wikipedia, in good faith, to make an edit, is doing so because they believe they are making it better. So surely that should be the default? I mean for articles that aren't protected in some way and editors who are established, our edits are automatically "live" and "retained". It isn't like we need to prove they are better to someone before they show up, or that they are removed after a few days unless anyone confirms it. And reverting is officially discouraged by editing policy in favour of trying to accommodate the change. -- Colin°Talk 08:28, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[]
All these are factors, certainly, and there is such a conflict, but we know that quite a large proportion of (the minority of) edits that change texts aren't actually improvements. I don't see any workable "default" approach, either way. Each edit has to be looked at. We are still off-topic here. Johnbod (talk) 19:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Size of English Wikipedia (1000 vol)
Speaking of subject-by-subject, this image splits Wikipedia's subject areas into these categories:
  • Biology/health/medicine,
  • Business,
  • Science,
  • Geography,
  • History,
  • Biography (living + dead),
  • Society, and
  • Culture/arts
I wonder whether editors would choose an include/exclude default differently for the different categories. Presumably for overlapping categories (e.g., BLP + pop culture), the more restrictive rule would apply. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[]

While this specific RfC question has merit, I think a related question that actually comes up more frequently might be a more important thing to discuss: what to do when there is consensus for change, but no consensus on which. This happened at RFA Reform 2021, Article Creation at Scale, maybe Emoji Redirects?, and probably other mega-RFCs that I've forgotten. People agree the current approach isn't working, but every specific proposal for change fails, and we're left with the broken status quo. It would be nice if we had some sort of escape valve from those, like a mandate to implement the change that saw the least opposition, taking into account somehow when each proposal was made during the lifespan of the overarching RfC. Folly Mox (talk) 13:54, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]

Oh, I thought we were talking about article content. Behind the scenes proposals are different, but ideas can change - compare the current Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Increase_default_thumbnail_size_from_220px_to_250px with the last attempt, a mere decade ago. Johnbod (talk) 17:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[]

Responses

It's impossible to answer this because important information is missing. I need to know...

This is the place to say "I can't answer this, because you didn't say __________" (e.g., whether there were more admins on one side, whether the material in this new article is considered 'long-standing', what the article's subject area is, whether the material could realistically be moved to a different article, or whatever else is on your mind).

Feel free to ping WhatamIdoing (who wrote the hypothetical story above) in your comment, if you think she could supply the information you need.

  • Your comment here...

We have enough information. In principle, when there is truly no consensus, I believe we should err on the side of...

Most responses to this will probably be either exclusion or inclusion, though you should not feel constrained by those options. Please consider explaining your view with:

  • an example from articles you edit (e.g., "In articles about geography, editors might reasonably disagree about whether to mention _____, and in such cases I believe..."),
  • a common-sense or practical explanation (e.g., "In my experience with Wikipedia:Contentious topics, what helps settle difficult disputes is...") , or
  • a values-based explanation about what you think is best for Wikipedia's editing community and/or Wikipedia's readers ("In line with my favorite of our shared Wikipedia:Principles, namely...").

Remember, we're looking for editors' own opinions about what, in principle, is the normally right thing to do, when editors really can't form a consensus.

I think the former, the default to what we had before you came along, is bad for the project. It is based on an "old hands" mindset that has crept in that thinks all us old hands have created something wonderful and all these new editors are just making it worse. I think that is fundamentally against the principles upon which Wikipedia was founded and preserved at WP:5P3: any contributions can and may be mercilessly edited and our default should be to try to incorporate and improve those edits. Our Wikipedia:Editing policy says "Even the best articles should not be considered complete, as each new editor can offer new insights on how to enhance and improve the content in it at any time."
Wrt the latter, that content has to justify itself and get consensus to be added or kept if challenged, I think on balance that is better than the opposite, that we make it really really hard to remove or keep out the shit. Not all additions are useful, educational or encyclopaedic information. Some of it is bad data. Some of it misleading. Some of it just doesn't belong on this project. Nearly of our policies are about keeping the bad out. There's a reason for that. Our heart wants to keep adding but our heads know we have to keep a check on it. So, when there's a dispute, and editors can't agree, we should go with keeping it out. -- Colin°Talk 22:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[]
We have a bunch of policies for that. Escalating to involve more people via an RFC or noticeboards, for instance. IMHO the absolute worst situation caused by these attempts at "default outcome" policies is when people fail to escalate in that manner. More generally, though, while having long-running disputes that continuously fail to reach consensus is bad, I would argue that a "false consensus" created by policies that dictate a particular outcome and leave people who prefer that outcome with no reason to engage is even worse. Some problems are genuinely difficult and complex and unsettled even in the real world, and therefore are things we have to discuss a lot and revisit regularly. It's bad when policies waste editor time and effort, sure, but if something reaches the point of massive RFCs and still plainly has no consensus, that probably means it's complex and difficult and is deserving of a lot of effort to get it right. A "just say screw it and go with X" policy isn't helpful in those situations. Ultimately, when there's no consensus, what is probably needed is a compromise, rather than one side or the other trying to clobber the other with "we win automatically" policies. --Aquillion (talk) 21:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Yes, we have lots of methods for dispute resolution, but what are editors supposed to do in the meantime, when none of those efforts produce a consensus? Right now, we are telling editors two contradictory defaults. I would like to have either one default or none (none being what @Amakuru seems to lean towards), but we need to stop having two contradictory ones.
Some intractable problems really aren't amenable to consensus. You can't name an article both Gdansk and Danzig, to give one of the oldest examples of this problem. You can't put a particular image both halfway in and halfway out of an article. You can't name someone's spouse and also not mention the spouse's name. Some of these are complex and difficult disputes, but many of them are really quite minor, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I'd bother to disagree but will follow your instruction above: "Don't tell us what this or that policy says ...". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:25, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[]
WAID, you haven't expressed the conflict here as accurately as you did elsewhere. I'm not sure keep/remove are the right words to use in the policy examples.
One policy is exclude unless there is consensus to include, it doesn't matter if the disputed text is a new addition or longstanding text that is only now being disputed. But the other policy is to restore to the previously existing text unless there is consensus to change it, it doesn't matter if the change is addition, removal or modification. -- Colin°Talk 09:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[]
Which, under the specific circumstance of "long-standing material" with no consensus, means that wikilawyers and other editors cite policy #1 (as if it were the only one that exists) when we want to remove it, and policy #2 (equally as if it were the only one that exists or matters) when we personally want to keep the material in question. Unless you know the policies as well as the top 1% (or top 0.1%), you have very little chance of discovering that you're being manipulated by the editor who claims that "the policy" requires things to go my way. There is a conflict; we need to know what editors believe the best practice is before we can figure out how to remove the conflict. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:29, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I don't disagree with that, just your choice of "keep/remove" to describe both policies. We have a policy ONUS that allows text to be "removed" if there isn't consensus to include it, but that same policy might also be invoked if someone had merely suggested the addition on a talk page (so there's nothing to remove), or when it had already been removed prior to discussion. That policy can be used to argue against putting it back or adding in the first place. The other policy, NOCON, could similarly be cited to "remove" recently added text, or "keep" recently removed text. Both policies can be used to "remove". And both policies can, with such ambiguous terms, be used to "keep", where "keep" might mean "keep the existing text that you removed" or "keep it how it was before you added your text".
Best to keep the language clear and unrelated to what edits are needed to bring it about. One policy is on the include/exclude axis wrt disputed text, and another is on the new/old axis wrt disputed text. What edits are required to achieve these results is a separate matter. -- Colin°Talk 08:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[]
In other words, the closer has to make a decision … but one that acknowledges the lack of consensus and the need for further discussion… a decision that can intentionally be easily overturned if/when consensus actually forms.
It doesn’t really matter Which decision the closer makes. Some closers will usually lean towards “keep” and others will usually lean towards “omit”… but that’s Ok. It is understood that such closures are temporary in nature - telling the disputing editors what to do pending an actual consensus (eventually) forming. Blueboar (talk) 15:45, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[]
I like this solution, and it might be particularly helpful for the fairly common situation in which there isn't a a true consensus, but the discussion leans a little to one side. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[]

Summing up

Andrevan, Colin, Johnbod, ActivelyDisinterested, Blueboar, Folly Mox, SMcCandlish, Aquillion, L3X1, Dustfreeworld, Slacker13, Bon courage, Peter Gulutzan, Path2space, Graeme Bartlett, Butwhatdoiknow, AddWittyNameHere, Amakuru, Scribolt:

Hello, all (and anyone else watching this page).

Thank you for your comments above. I wonder if you'd be willing to help with a sort of collective summing-up. I realize that I'm proposing a bit of an unusual process, but my main goal is to find out what you all think, rather than to make a specific decision or to "win" a dispute, and I think that hearing a little more from you will help. Also, you're all pretty smart and experienced editors. I don't think that we need someone else to tell us what we said ourselves (yet, anyway). ;-)

Along those lines, if you're willing to give me a few more minutes of your time, please consider one request and a couple of questions:

  1. Request: Is there a comment from someone else that you thought was helpful, interesting, or insightful? For example, you might choose a comment that helped you better understand a view opposite your own, or that helped you solidify your own view, or that you keep thinking about.
  2. Question: In this discussion about disputes ending in no consensus, do you feel like there is support for the idea of a "status quo" default after discussions have ended?
  3. Question: In this discussion about disputes ending in no consensus, do you feel like there is support for removing all/nearly all disputed information until there is a consensus to include it?
  4. Question: In this discussion about disputes ending in no consensus, do you feel like there is support for keeping all/nearly all (non-BLP) disputed information until there is a consensus to exclude it?

Thank you all for your help. I really do appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]

Here are my answers:
  1. I keep thinking about this comment from Blueboar, about asking editors who writing closing summaries to specify what action should be taken (e.g., "No consensus, which means ______ in this case").
  2. I was surprised by how unimportant WP:QUO seemed to most editors in this discussion (the WP:NOCON approach).
  3. I feel like there was some support for removing sourced information that some editors don't want (the WP:ONUS approach).
  4. I feel like there was some, but not as much, support for keeping sourced information that some editors don't want. I don't know what that could mean for the Wikipedia:Editing policy, or for Wikipedia:Be bold or (kinda sorta) for our way of talking about Wikipedia and its goals in general.
What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
I think I've come to to think a key aspect of all this is what "no consensus" means. If it means truly, really no consensus after there's been well-publicised/attended community consideration then I'd be happier formalising some kind of consequence for that. But if it just means one or two editors rocking up at an article and making a fuss then I see anything in this area as a potentially problematic gateway to wikilawyering. The current NOCON/ONUS ambiguity has remained unchallenged I think because in practice it works quite well in a kind of 'European rules' rather than 'American rules' way. The power is granted via ONUS to remove anything without consensus, but NOCON can be invoked with a shrug if people will wear it. Bon courage (talk) 06:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
This seems well reasoned. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
Regarding your comment about WP:QUO, that recommended procedure only applies before it becomes clear that there is no consensus. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 17:40, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
QUO is frequently (mis-)invoked as prescribing an outcome that applies after discussions have ended. The pattern that Colin identified (about the risk that a clear rule for a True™ No Consensus being invoked at the start of a discussion to "win" now, without allowing space for a full discussion) is plausible to me precisely because so many editors have claimed that our rules around reverting to the status quo ante bellum apply far more broadly than one might find from reading the WP:QUO section itself. Think, too, about how editors perceive WP:BRD, especially if they've never read it ("BRD says you have to start the discussion"; "You're required to follow BRD"; "BRD says I can revert you but you can't revert me"...).
I expected more editors to explore whether QUO would work as a better post-dispute rule than inclusion vs exclusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
The statement that "The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content" has commonly been interpreted as "Until you have achieved that consensus, you don't get to include it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
Common ≠ Correct --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
Yup, I would agree that 90% of the angst over “no consensus” is due to this one single sentence. I find it a useful tool when rewriting and cleaning trivial fluff from articles… but it does get misused. It should be used like a scalpel… and too often it is used as a hammer (and as they say: “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail”). Blueboar (talk) 22:22, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
Common errors are still errors, but when the question is what the Wikipedia community's actual policy is, then what editors do or accept is more important than what the words on a page say. When consensus (with a lowercase c) is the main rule of a wiki, then if editors commonly agree that a policy sentence means ____, then that's what it actually does mean. The goal (as explained in WP:PG and WP:NOTLAW) is for the written policies to reflect the practiced policies. If the community accepts that this sentence means I get to remove everything until you provide written evidence of consensus to include it, then at some level, that's what that sentence actually means, even if it doesn't look like it. (If you'd like to see how editors use that sentence in practice, then this set of search results may be helpful. Expect to see a lot of editors saying some variation on "The WP:ONUS is on you to get consensus".)
My goal, as someone who likes to work on policy, is to make the wording of the written policies reflect the community's actual practices and what they intend for the policies to say. I do this because I want new folks to have a fair chance and because I want to avoid preventable disputes. The purpose of this RFC is to help me more clearly understand what the community believes these policies ought to say, so that I've got a better chance at making them clearly reflect the community's goals (and not, e.g., my own). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/When_there_is_no_consensus_either_way&oldid=1206352660"