Communal enabling of quality

Consensus is a hard sell. Rarely will every person agree with every other person on any one point, much less a complex web of information or processes.

I do not think we need to be focusing on creating consensus. I think we need to focus on understanding what users do, how they use this creation we call Wikipedia, and what they are really looking to get out of it, both the experience and the information. I also think there is a point where a supermajority agrees and that may be good enough. If you are reaching for a true concensus, I think you will derail the project in its entirety.

I want to clarify that I am NOT saying that some people's opinions do not matter. Every good policy "crafter" will tell you that compromise breeds forward motion. Unfortunately, the "audience" for Wikipedia may not like compromise. So the challenge is to identify stakeholders who will accept the compromise as long as the majority of their issues are dealt with, and sell the compromise to others. Perhaps the notion of compromise needs to be built into the framework rather than the concept of consensus.

Wouldn't it be awful if each community crafted their own policies and made their own decisions without functioning within a cohesive framework? I see the process we are engaging in as a certain amount of codification rather than handing a carte blanche invitation to everyone who has an idea to propose it. There has to be a certain amount of self-censoring that people need to be encouraged to do to ensure the system itself isn't overloaded with information for niche markets.

So in a way, that question leads to "what is Wikipedia growing up to be?"

@Bhneihouse: the 'supermajority' is actually what I mean when I use the word consensus at Wikipedia. ;-)

Anyway, the compromise is not ours to seek, Wikipedia being a tertiary source only. Wikipedia should just reflect the consensus and compromises of others, and if that doesn't exist, neutrally describe all viewpoints (even that seems very difficult sometimes :-) ). We have the principles of encyclopeadicity, neutrality and balance anchored in the guidelines of most projects.

A problem raised is that many users don't understand or don't want to understand these principles. Before we go on discussing that, we'll have to ask ourselves if this is an important problem to discuss here and now.