User talk:Eloquence/Beliefs

Ohhhhhh, group therapy :-)

Consensus and compromise are valuable

I agree with what you wrote there. I also agree you generally make efforts to find compromise. I think we agree on this issue generally.

Voting is a valid last resort, but needs a defined framework

I think I could agree with most of what is written there, but it is my feeling that in the past, you have often not followed these guidelines yourself.
As far as I can remember, the only global vote you set this year was wikinews one, and I have been rather satisfied by the way it was done. It was not so with previous ones. Though I entirely recognised the efforts you put in them, they sometimes suffered with

• not being very useful (sometimes, it really seemed to me there was consensus and vote was not required; After the vote result, my feeling revealed true)
• being too numerous (too many votes upset people, better to try to define which ones are important and which ones are not; and to avoid those unecessary)
• having too short deadlines and not being translated (we talked enough of this I guess so I do not need to explain more)
• giving the feeling they were only organised to make you self important.

In short... to reflect on your title... I agree that voting needs a defined framework, but I think you often consider we reached "the last resort" too early :-)

But I did not have any complaint to make on this point in the past year.

I have to admit that I haven't taken the issue of translations as seriously as I should have when I started out on the Wikimedia projects. I was almost exclusively active on the English Wikipedia, and many of the early discussions I was involved in took place on wikien-l. As such, my perspective was somewhat limited.

A lot has changed since then to broaden my perspective; in particular, I have seen many wonderful innovations come from wikis in other languages, I have met Wikimedians in different countries, and I have seen translation efforts organized by people like Sj and Aphaia really taking off. To me, it is now absolutely clear that we have to make an effort to reach people in as many languages as possible, but you and I both know that sometimes, it is easier to just push ahead and use English (I note, for example, that the Stewards/elections 2005 page you started is only available in English). We need to resist this temptation for decisions of gravity.

As for your other criticism that I sometimes started votes when no vote was necessary, that's probably true for the mailing list changes I made (foundation-l, merging intlwiki-l into wikipedia-l). Starting votes on these matters was an attempt to avoid the impression of unilateralism, but it probably would have been sufficient to simply ask for feedback and then do it. I should write a little bit on this page on when votes shouldn't be used, based on my past experiences.

I don't accept the charge of organizing votes out of self-importance, however. I think that is a serious misunderstanding of my personality. I'm not interested in fame. If I, for example, wanted to be omnipresent in the media, I had many opportunities to play that role -- which I generally let pass, and let others do the job. Nor have I insisted on being mentioned in the history of the projects or their official documents. Most people don't even know what I do or have done, and that's perfectly fine. My motivation for doing these things has always been to make meaningful progress.--Eloquence 18:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Lack of processes leads to cabals

I absolutely agree with this.

Cabals are harmful

I could have written that :-)

Conflict is inevitable

Clearly agree.

I would even go further in saying that conflict is good to a certain extent. Note that I sometimes provoke conflict (which might be very unreasonable sometimes) to get the timids out of their shells and fight groupthinking. Note as well that I do not feel especially a problem that I am often in conflict with you... or you with me... as I believe we both hold truth in our own way, and that only a mix of both truth would be good. This is in particular true as you have an overbearing tendency and tend to shut down your opponents with great skills in argumenting. In this, I was precious to you in reminding you that you were not entirely the boss and in showing other people that you could be contradicted and that no death would occur afterwards. Do not complain about me saying this, you wrote it yourself, it is important that some people do not run away... See ? I am important after all ;-)

Hmmm, seriously, I agree with this paragraph :-)

I have no problem with you, or anyone else, contradicting me. What frustrates me in any discussion is when arguments simply don't work, that is, the discussion goes to the personal level, to the level of "You have done this and shouldn't have done it", when we move in circles and nobody listens anymore. I often got the impression in our discussions that it didn't matter what explanation I provided: as long as you were still in a bad mood, you would never agree with me. :-) And I would say you have a bit of a tendency to take discussions to the personal level -- you are much more social than I am, and I think it is sometimes difficult for you to separate an argument from the person making it. Sometimes I would have wished to just argue anonymously with you, though I have a feeling you would immediately know who I am anyway. :)--Eloquence 18:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Don't make enemies

Now... If I agree with the title (which does not mean I necessarily succeed to do this, I do not), I frankly have a very different opinion on the matter than you have :-)

I will not insist on your sexist comments, but simply say there are many other sort of ennemies.

This little essay is of course written from my personal experiences on Wikimedia. I'm sure yours differ greatly.--Eloquence 18:41, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Anthere

Bravo

Hi Erik,

Thanks for sharing your beliefs.

I recently read a log of one of your discussions on IRC with Wikinews contributor Amgine, where you wrote about the effectiveness of openly documenting practices.

Your writings on your page here on Meta do a much better job of explaining this issue than what you were able to get across on IRC.

You made an especially insightful comment that if a policy or guideline is not written down, it can't be edited or effectively debated. I'm hoping you can further address the objection that too many rules leads to instruction creep, because the "instruction creep" argument against extensive policy and guidelines can be persuasive when combined with the "be bold" buzzphrase.

It appears that there is more than one axis at work here, so I'm curious how you find a rational balance between the extremes. Is there is a happy balance on the "editing" axis of "be bold" <-> "build a consensus" that is compatible with a happy balance on the "policy" axis of "avoid instruction creep" <-> "openly document practices"?

Finally, I was startled by your blunt use of the term "cabal", given how much dismissive joking and hand-waving there has been by various long-time contributors on various Wikimedia sites proclaiming that "there is no cabal" (a phenomenon from Wikipedia that I started to see leaking onto Wikinews before I left). Your writings on this subject are quite refreshing. I've long believed that even if cabals don't eventually lead to actual corruption, in the current global political climate, it's important to avoid the appearance of insiders running things behind the scenes, especially if a community is claiming that its wiki is open.

Anyways, it's quite generous of you to take the time to write up a brief essay about some of your hard-won experiences on Wikimedia, and the principles you've learned as a result. If you ever decide to write a book-length document with more details about what you've learned about building large organizations and effective collaboration on Wikimedia, please let me know - I will buy a copy! (Just joking about "buying" it - I imagine you would give any future book you may write away for free. :)

I hope you won't mind if I quote from some of your writings here on Meta over on another website (I'll provide an attributed link back to this page to respect your GFDL license.) Your experience will be useful for non-Wikimedians who struggle with some of these same issues in other contexts.

Thanks again for sharing.

Regards,

David Vasquez
San Jose, California
May 19, 2005

Nice to hear from you, David. I've actually written a book in German [1], but it does not deal much with the issues discussed here. I have expanded the page a bit to address the instruction creep/bureaucracy argument. As for the term cabal, I'm primarily referring to the "if you're not a member, you've got no say" aspect. In many cases, club and faction would also be appropriate terms, though cabal emphasizes the potential future issue of corruption which in many cases will occur.--Eloquence 02:27, 21 May 2005 (UTC)