[EM] MJ for use on wikipedia?

[Juho Laatu]

Article titles can indeed be problematic since every article must have some title. There is no way of having articles without a title in the case that there is no consensus. Old titles can however be used for some time (maybe with a note pointing out the ongoing debate) while seeking consensus.

Wikipedia should of course have very clear policies on what kind of titles to use when there are different opinions. In the case of Ireland it seems to me that use of the formally correct names must be the correct answer. If the formal name of the country is "Republic of Ireland", then let's use that. The "(island)" addition would depend on if Wikipedia recommends clarifications in this format or clarifications in the text right after the title (as it is now). I read some of the Wikipedia naming policies, and they already seem to cover typical problem cases quite extensively. I hope they will be kept up to date so that next time when a similar problem emerges, the solution will be obvious and there is no need to vote.

I think also levels one and two could be used in this kind of naming conflicts. I'm not sure if the voters want to use strategies, although the discussion is heated. Also I don't know how quickly the issue must be solved, and if the title shall be decided as the voting result says or just based on the voting/polling results. But I wasn't there so I cant tell if discussion and consensus simply could not be used any more. In any case it is good that Wikipedia aims at making the working practices as discussion and consensus and agreed policy oriented as possible.

Juho


On 29.9.2012, at 1.16, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 
> 
> 2012/9/28 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
> On 28.9.2012, at 22.33, Jameson Quinn wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> 2012/9/28 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
>> Since Wikipedia says in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VOTE that "voting" is used maily to help in building consesus. The polls are thus not expected to be competitive. The final decisions are not made based on the poll results but in a discussion that the polls should help.
>> 
>> Please actually read the essay I linked earlier. It begins by acknowledging that consensus discussion is the norm on wikipedia, as you say. MJ is proposed specifically for those rare cases when that does not work and some decision is necessary (such as the "choice of software tool" example you give).
> 
> I read it and I tried to cover both competitive and non-competitive approaches, but I admit that I got too much lost on the non-competitive side while your text focused on the competitive part.
> 
> I understood that as long as we are talking about the "!voting" system we are talking about the discussion and consensus driven approach.
> 
> I didn't study the history of the Ireland and abortion activism cases. I wonder if they were cases where people decided to vote on the Wikipedia content, or maybe on something else like used tools.
> 
> 
> Both of them are debates centering on article titles. An article can have only one title, and a title can refer to only one article. Redirects and disambiguation pages can help reduce the tensions this creates, but there are cases where the dispute goes too deep, and eventually a vote is called.
> 
> So these would fit in the "third level" of your classification, and the technical issues around titles keep some of the normal mechanisms of compromise (ie, do both) from working.
> 
> Jameson

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