Online comments maybe not total waste of time
Conversations on news sites show how information and ideas spread
By Marissa Cevallos (link for Horsey)
Friday, November 12th, 2010

The actual article, if you are interested:

Vicenç Gómez; Hilbert J.Kappen; Andreas Kaltenbrunner (2010). "Modeling the structure and evolution of discussion cascades" (PDF). arΧiv:1011.0673v2 [physics.data-an].

Some people with particular political agendas have utilised Wikipedia Talk pages to great effect - using them as a standard forum effectively. They hardly ever edit - they are SPA's and they talk, talk, talk. They succeed through repetition largely, as Wikipedia scrolls away pretty fast with verbosity, and they simply repeat themselves regardless of prior discussion, wearing those who argue with them down and getting their message up front all the time. They are happy frustrating people enough to get them into trouble, and out of their way of course.

It's where you need clever and neutral administrators, but there are no standards for adminship on Wikipedia at all, and admin often effectively 'annex' difficult subjects. This allows people to debate endlessly (to the extent where they will cynically admit it), and the admin who have decided to be involved will concentrate mainly on keeping a particular favoured article edit intact, protection-locking it if necessarily. But it's not always about the article, and the 'debate' can all go on across numerous related Talk pages, often pushing away the productive editors as it hijacks the Talk page (or gets the article locked, or an edit restriction – in cases where editing is actually happening). In those situations the civility and socking can get seriously out of order - sock accounts can get consolidated, and all kinds of dodgy political opinions get repeatedly expressed. Wikipedia becomes a forum, and just a few people holding several accounts can be extremely successful at pushing some highly contentious agendas.

There is no question that the Facebook/Forum side of Wikipedia adversely effects actual article development, but that's never been top of the Wikimedia priority outside of their armoured Gideon of an FA machine. Wikipedia cares as much about dealing with sensitive issues sensitively as it does about presenting true facts.

There is some thinking here that is part of the problem. "SPA" is another word for "expert," i.e., someone with particular knowledge of a subject and concern about it. Experts can be biased, and, in fact, typically hold views that are different from the general population. Some experts are "fringe," which means that their views are only held by a small minority of those actually knowledgeable about a field. Others are "amateur," which may mean that their knowledge is less than that of employed academics or other professionals. Or not. Sometimes some amateurs know more than some professionals.

Now, Wikipedia has neutrality as a fundamental policy. The only reliable sign of neutrality is the consensus of the knowledgeable. I really think it's important that this be understood. I proposed this at RfAr and there were a host of the usual suspects yelling at me for it, as a preposterous idea. But it's a simple truth. Any other standard is subjective, easily affected by the ignorance or bias of those judging.

The assumption was being made that absolute consensus would be required. No, I was saying that absolute consensus is the only completely reliable sign of neutrality. Complete certainty of neutrality may not be attainable, but it can be approached, and much more easily than most Wikipedians think, because the community structure absolutely doesn't encourage it, in practice, and people who try to obtain high consensus often get banned.

How? Because what high consensus takes is thorough discussion, that's part of the problem.

I.e, consensus process is famous for seemingly endless discussions, it is one reason that organizations shy away from it, but that is a misunderstanding of what good consensus process is like. It is not only not necessary that everyone discuss, but only that the result be accepted by everyone who participates, as a goal. My own view is that decisions can and should be made by majority, but by a majority in a community that understands the need for higher levels of consensus. Wikipedia is such a community, but it does not know how to get there.

There are simple responses to what is viewed as excessive commentary. It takes a moment to collapse a discussion or move it to a subpage. There is no harm in allowing biased discussion to exist, blocking people because they "push a POV" in discussion is thoroughly stupid, as long as they do so civilly. That POV is needed to allow judgement of true consensus.

Pushing a POV in article edits, that's another thing. Revert warring, that's another thing. But discussion?

I write tomes, to be sure. However, I also, quite often, on Wikipedia, collapse them into a visible top level that's pretty short, with extended discussion and explanation in collapse. Nobody who isn't interested has to read it. However, when I returned to editing Cold fusion, the total number of characters added were held against me, alleging that I was writing "walls of text" when, quite often, there was no "wall."

The fact is that those complaining, generally, didn't like the POV, and their own POV was indefensible, as I'd demonstrated time and again, whenever I went through DR process. That included RfCs, and ArbComm itself.

I'd use layering here, if the software supported it. I'd take a tome that I'd written, summarize it, and collapse the bulk of it to something that the reader can see with one click if they want to. In MediaWiki, it's trivial. And, in fact, this can be done there with the edits of others. If done neutrally, it is usually nondisruptive. And sometimes a friendly editor will do it for me, adding a good summary that shows me they actually read the thing, but also making it more accessible to others.