Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The Challenges of Consensus 

In this chapter, It says to us that it identifies the difficulties of consensus decision making, and its meaning and practice for collaboration at the English Wikipedia.

 

The Case of Disambiguation

In the history of the encyclopedia much has been made of the attempts to organize knowledge and how that dream was eventually superseded by simple alphabetical order.

It is really interesting fact. Even though we naturally see the encyclopedia now, it is gathering of alphabet. It is great thing. but, we don't appreciate.

In the case of a collision Wikipedia will likely offer the reader a “disambiguation” link at the top of an article or a whole page with a list of links to more specific articles, or both.

“Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts in article titles that occur when a single title could be associated with more than one article.

However, should these disambiguators be applied in every case for consistency’s sake, or just those for which there is already a preexisting article? Answering this question, and thousands of others like it, is an integral part of Wikipedia collaboration.

So then, what is consensus and how do you know you’ve reached it? This question eventually reached the Arbitration Committee: “a panel of experienced users that exists to impose binding solutions to Wikipedia disputes that neither communal discussion, administrators, nor mediation have been able to resolve.”

 

“Rough” Consensus

The Wiktionary definitions for consensus speak of “general agreement,” “without active opposition to the proposed course of action.”

consensus is overwhelming agreement “which does not mean unanimity"

consensus certainly seems like an appropriate means for decision making in a community with egalitarian values and a culture of good faith.

The IETF is one of the oldest existing collaborative institutions on the Internet — it can be said to have built the Internet. And the W3C might be thought of as an institutional fork resulting from, in part, frustration over the slow pace of work at the IETF.

This “IETF Credo” would become one of the foundational aphorisms of collaborative culture on the Internet. Furthermore, this simple statement reflects the egalitarianism.

I first listen to this word "IETF", "W3C" . IETF is abbreviation of Internet Engineering Task Force.

It developes Internet standards to facilitate the use of the Internet in the United States. and W3C is abbreviation of World Wide Web Consortium.
I am interesting about IETF, W3C. these keep order in internet. 

 

Deliberation and Openness

There are many methods for making group decisions; one is flip a coin, vote, or seek consensus.

As Wikipedia’s “Consensus” policy notes: “Achieving consensus requires serious treatment of every group member’s considered opinion…. In the ideal case, those who wish to take up some action want to hear those who oppose it, because they count on the fact that the ensuing debate will improve the consensus.”

Its openness is particularly problematic because it is susceptible to trolling and “forum shopping.”

 

It is very easy to create the appearance of a changing consensus simply by asking again and hoping that a different and more sympathetic group of people will discuss the issue.”

Wikipedia’s decisions are not based on the number of people who showed up and voted a particular way on a particular day.

 

Time and Precedence

Consider a Wikipedia discussion related to how annoying it is when a bookmark or link to a Web page no longer works.

As in many of the issues facing Wikipedia, Wikipedians must achieve a delicate balance, this time between rehashing tired issues and reconsidering vital ones.

The IETF and W3C have some means for judging the merit of an issue.

First, working group charters are carefully constructed in order to focus on issues that are amenable to resolution within a specified time frame.

Second, the working group chair has a critical job in summarizing and recording discussion.

Despite all the focus on conversation and the cacophony that sometimes accompanies the consensus process, silence is one of the greatest challenges successful decision making

 

The Facilitator 

A poll which is now visible here included a question of whether television episode articles should only be disambiguated when necessary.

The poll was well-publicized. Nonetheless, a few members of the minority have declared that there was no consensus and that the dispute is still open.

Of course, consensus does not mean unanimity, but as long as we were short of unanimity,

The core issue of this debate, how to name articles about television episodes, is really quite unimportant in the greater scheme of Wikipedia.

Most importantly, how Wikipedians can convince a recalcitrant minority when this is the case?

As Yaksha noted, he believed there was consensus and began to rename articles to disambiguate only when necessary,

but “Elonka, however, claimed that there was no consensus, to move the articles, and that the moves were disruptive.” And so the “edit war” began

Yaksha and Elonka is minority.

The final decision notes that “It is the responsibility of the administrators and other responsible parties to close extended policy discussions they are involved in.”

An established and respected user who is not an administrator could close a discussion.

However, it is still difficult to see how this situation could have been avoided

Fortunately, Wikipedian Ace Class Shadow advise some useful advice while recognizing there is no perfect solution:

one could use templates to mark that a discussion page is now archived, or one could “ask an impartial closer to do the deed, stating that you’ll respect their common sense judgment.

I don't know in detail about wikipedia. So, Which part does discussion of wikipedia mean? Even though I don't know that which part means, there are some ways to solution. I learned how to solution conflict of discussion in detail.

 

Polling and Voting

Consensus is the preferred method of making decisions at Wikipedia

Yet, polling is an available technique within the consensus process.

How is polling different from voting? While people may confuse polling with voting.

polling should prompt and shape discussion, rather than finish it.

Voting is one of the best ways to quantify opinions in a large group.

For each member of the group, there’s a certain likelihood that he disagrees with one of the existing members.

The likelihood of conflict between two individuals grows geometrically.

And while voting may be appropriate in some circumstances, or at least a last resort. if consensus fails, the openness of Wikipedia, again, contributes to the sentiment that voting “is evil.”

 

 

Conclusion

people naturally look for means by which difficulties can be clearly dissected and neatly dispatched. But, given its reliance upon an assumption of good faith and a preference for consensus in its decision making, one can conclude that the Wikipedia community is relatively tolerant of the ambiguities inherent to collaborating on a world encyclopedia and rather trusting of human judgment over the long run.

In another “WikiSpeak” entry consensus is defined as “one of the three states that can be reached at the end of a discussion after all parties have become thoroughly fed up with it; the alternatives are no consensus or for pity’s sake, he wishes he’d never gotten involved in this.”

 

 

I don't know in detail about wikipedia. So, Which part does discussion of wikipedia mean? Through this reading, I learn how to overcome confliction of discussion.

Even though I learn this solution of confliction, I don't know why conflict form.

I learned about discussion in wikipedia in class before. That was about article.

The discussion is about "does the article delete or keep?"

I want to know this discussion subject is all or another discussion subject exists.

I would like to know more in detail about this parts .

 

Opinion about sharing information

When we watch ted's video in last class,  We learn that we can wasily share to information because of technical improvement and much leisure.
our last team members agree this parts and we think sharing information has good aspect and bad aspect.
In political and social aspects, It is good to us because we can know many officially important information.
But, sharing personal information through SNS is not good.
because that is invasion of privacy.

W9 readings

Chapter 4

The Puzzle of Openness

This consists of Open Content Communities , Discussing Openness and Conclusion.

And detailed contents are Transparency and Integrity, Non-Discrimination and Non-Interference of Open Content Communities.

Can Anyone Really Edit?, Interfacing with the Outside World, Bureaucratization and Enclaves and Gender of Discussing Openness.

 

This reading starts "Trolls are the driving force of Wikipedia."

This chapter are evidence that openness has advantages and disadvantages.

 

Wikipedia’s claim of openness is seen in its motto: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” But what does “openness” actually mean? Because of the ascendancy of FOSS, open is now a buzzword, becoming a prefix  to even such well-established notions as democracy and religion.

To be fair, Wikipedia has not helped this confusion given its early rule of “Ignore All Rules.” Granted, it is clever to have a rule dismissing rules, and its substance is of merit. it is good merit to delete to confusing things.

I think this occurs Wikipedia success.

The essay “What ‘Ignore All Rules’ Means” explains that novices should feel free to contribute, don’t be overly legalistic but work in the spirit of improving the encyclopedia, and there is no substitute for good judgment.

Yet, these difficulties do not mean the notion of openness should be jettisoned altogether

 

<Openness and its related values are then considered in light of four cases in which we see the Wikipedia community wrestling with how it conceives of itself>

 

In the first case I return to the question of whether Wikipedia is really something “anyone can edit”? That is, when Wikipedia implemented new technical features to help limit vandalization of the site, did it make Wikipedia more or less open? In the second case I describe the way in which a maturing open content community's requirement to interact with the world beyond Wikipedia affects its openness.

Third, I briefly review concerns of how bureaucratization within Wikipedia might threaten openness.

Finally, I explore a case in which a closed (female-only) group is set up outside of, and perhaps because of, the “openness” of the larger Wikipedia community.

 

 

Open Content Communities

 

<More specifically, an open content community is characterized by:>

*Open content: provides content that is available under licenses like those that satisfy the Open Source Definition.

*Transparency: makes its processes, rules, determinations, and their rationales available.

*Integrity: ensures the integrity of the processes and the participants’ contributions.

*Nondiscrimination: prohibits arbitrary discrimination against persons, groups, or characteristics not relevant to the community’s scope of activity. Persons and proposals should be judged on their merits. Leadership should be based on meritocratic or representative processes.

*Noninterference: the linchpin of openness, if a constituency disagrees with the implementation of the previous three values, the open content license permits the constituents to take the content and commence work under their own conceptualization without interference. While “forking” is often complained about in open communities. it is an essential characteristic and major benefit of open communities as well.

 

Although the first and last characteristics provide a “bright line” with which one can distinguish between instances of open content by their copyright licenses and the consequent ability to fork, the social values of transparency, integrity, and nondiscrimination do not provide an equally clear demarcation.

 

The benefits of openness are not limited to software.

In this view Wikipedia is an unsuitable case of the open source model because the merit of software developers and their code can be judged by objective standards but knowledge claims cannot.

 

“People love to compare Wikipedia to Open Source but guess what: bad, incorrect code doesn’t compile.

 

Wikipedia is probably the best-known example in the wider free culture movement today.

Wikipedia shares information of many people.

So, This information is more and more wider than other encyclopedia.

I am also used to Wikipedia. Even though I uses Wikipedia in class, I am finding many article and creating empty article.

through my experience, Information of Wikipedia is vary.

Newcomers are always to be welcomed. There must be no cabal, there must be no elites, there must be no hierarchy or structure which gets in the way of this openness to newcomers.” This is further reflected in the famous Wikipedia maxim.

In wikipedia, there should be no elites. Nevertheless fears of a cabal continue to arise every so often.

Extreme Unction’s First Law notes that “if enough people act independently towards the same goal, the end result is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.

 

“One important thing to note is that if advocates of some viewpoint wish to claim that we are biased, and we are unable to come to a consensus accommodation of some kind, they will be free to use our content as a foundation, and to build their own encyclopedia with various articles added or removed.

 

 

Discussing Openness

 

The English Wikipedia declares itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”

Even those who always log in might still support allowing others to edit without logging in.

 

Individuals who wish to protect their privacy would be better off creating a pseudonym with which to edit Wikipedia content.

I call to mind that if I don't log in, Wikipedia is made to pseudonym.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is continually vandalized.

When it becomes clear that a specific user is persistently abusive, administrators may block his or her editing for a specified period, or in serious cases they might institute a life-time ban.

To me less confident in English, This seems to my strong helper.

Wikipedia is free and open, but restricts both freedom and openness where they interfere with creating an encyclopedia.

I learn that even though wikipedia is free and open, it is not a forum for unregulated free speech.

 

Openness refers not only to the number of people who can edit, but a holistic assessment of the entire process.

Wikipedia can know to opinion of other people.

So, I think that Wikipedia is excellent work. because it is a encyclopedia made through opinion of other people.

 

Within the community, but mostly from without, there was much discussion about Wikipedia’s adherence to its principles of openness and veracity, and its responsibility to the safety of others since it is not only subject to influence from the outside world, but can also affect the world it documents.

 

Wikis do not add unnecessary process in and of themselves: they are simple, accessible, flexible, quick, and cumulative.

community process need not be overly specified in fear of a mistake since content changes are easily reverted.

I like to this advantage of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is no exception: despite the norm of “Avoid Instruction Creep,” the “ratio of policy citations to talk edits” is increasing

 

Some degree of policy is necessary in any community, and bureaucratization is a common feature of organizational development.

 

Even in the face of a proliferation of process, the open content community values of transparency and integrity are largely preserved.

 

One should not be surprised that a source of contention in open content communities is when a subset of community members creates a closed space.

There are many private, semi-private and secret lists in which wikimedians make decisions with each other without ever telling anyone or explaining.

I first heard "wikimedian" through this part.

For while cabal formation is a seemingly inevitable structural result of group decision making, and legal threats are an inescapable reality of living in a litigious society, enclaves are purposely chosen by a subset of the community in seeming contradiction with the values of openness and equality.

 

 

Offlist chat about the recent discussions on systemic gender bias in Wikipedia made it clear that a number of women were not comfortable contributing to the conversation there. That is WikiChix. Yet, WikiChix’s exclusion of males, rather than being open and pro-female, is obviously problematic with respect to transparency and nondiscrimination

 

Conclusion

 

Wikipedia is an example of an open content community.

Ultimately, an important descriptive feature of an open content community is a lot of discussion about its values and how to balance them. By this measure, Wikipedia certainly qualifies.

 

 

Actually, This reading is difficult to me.

Even though accurate interpretation is difficult, it’s convenient to understand because I am learning about wikipedia through class now.

In this reading, there is “Enclaves and Gender”.

But , This " Unclave and Gender" is unfamiliar term.

I don't understand well this part.

Other parts are understanad because of learning and understanding through Wikipedia.

I don't understand well that gender is what association with wikipedia.

Everyone can edit wikipedia. But, this reading say gender bias occurs.

Gender bias is obviously problem.

So, I want to know what is gender bias in Wikipedia.