SmashWiki talk:Consensus

Policy discussion

Support

1. Support as nom. Serpent King 12:42, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
2. Support this is basically policy already, it just hasn't been written down before now, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be made official. Alex Parpotta the flying lobster! 13:14, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
3. Support, but only as a policy. --- Monsieur Crow, Author Extraordinaire, 13:17, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
4. Shut up and take my support! -- Beep (talk) 16:43, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
5. May be a little late, but support, this is the way I've been trying to do things personally and I have no problems with it Nymbare and his talk 17:02, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
6. Support A51 Trooper 19:42, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
7. Support, because we definitely need a clear-cut procedure for a consensus. Black Vulpine of the Furry Nation. Furries make the Internets go! :3 20:32, 8 July 2017 (EDT)
8. Weak support thanks to the recent edits. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 23:29, 12 July 2017 (EDT)

   Cheers. Serpent King 23:30, 12 July 2017 (EDT)

9. I support per my comments. - EndGenuity (talk) 13:36, 17 July 2017 (EDT)

Neutral

1. Neutral leaning towards oppose. I'm not sure that there's even a need to explain the concept, and going too much into specifics could be overly restrictive and rigid. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 20:47, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

   Just one example of a time we needed it. Serpent King 03:04, 9 July 2017 (EDT)

   That really only applies to one of the sections here. Regardless, it does provide a use for part of the policy, so shifting to neutral. I'm still somewhat concerned about the "what does and doesn't need consensus" section though. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 13:17, 9 July 2017 (EDT)

   Could you be more specific? Serpent King 17:47, 9 July 2017 (EDT)

   Too restrictive for future potential decisions and page changes that might require or not require consensus. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 22:58, 9 July 2017 (EDT)

   Give me a scenario in which this policy would needlessly hinder a change to go through, or one that wrongly allows a change to go through without a good consensus Serpent King 19:53, 12 July 2017 (EDT)

(reset indent) Pretty much any minor edit to a policy could be construed as an "update". A total reorganization of a page could be construed as a "layout change". These are somewhat niche situations, but we would want to at least include a little more flexibility for those situations and allow for some case-by-case judgement. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 22:39, 12 July 2017 (EDT)

Comments

Will this be considered a policy or a guideline?

--- Monsieur Crow, Author Extraordinaire, 13:10, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

Not entirely sure at the present, although I think I am leaning more towards guideline. Serpent King 13:14, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

I'd support as a policy, but not as a guideline; I feel this is something that should be considered a "core" policy of any Wiki.

--- Monsieur Crow, Author Extraordinaire, 13:16, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

Yeah maybe you're right. Serpent King 13:18, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

Related to the idea of needing consensus for major template or style changes: perhaps we should specify seeking consensus for layout or design changes affecting a large number of pages at once? It's a recurring issue of someone deciding to make a change on 40 pages at once without having any discussion first, and trying to revert a ton of changes at once just to restore status quo during a talk page discussion is a real headache. Miles (talk) 22:35, 8 July 2017 (EDT)

Ah yeah, that's true. Alrighty. Serpent King 03:03, 9 July 2017 (EDT)

I think a couple notes (or perhaps a section) about consensus not necessarily setting things in stone and having the potential to be revoked would be useful for a page like this. Maybe it's just me, but I can imagine a lot of strange things happening. For instance, a consensus about a page arrangement is met at a certain point in time, two years later the userbase that came to the consensus goes completely inactive and the new userbase expresses opposition to that arrangement, reaching a different consensus and revoking the old one. Then a year passes and that same userbase from now three years ago gets triggered from consensus being overwritten (yeah I know Smashwiki:Policy makes a few comments along those lines but with a policy all about consensus I think this would be a better place for it). SK I know you might want the wording in our policies to be "firm" (I'm going to echo Monsieur Crow and say this should be a policy instead of a guideline), but I think it should address hypothetical scenarios like that, especially since I get the feeling it's happened before (I guess the rewrite of SW:NEWGAME is the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head?). Otherwise, this looks good so far. - EndGenuity (talk) 03:21, 10 July 2017 (EDT)

Would something like this work at the end of "What is considered a consensus?"

"Consensus on a given decision does not mean the decision is irreversible. If the feelings of the wiki's editors as a whole on a given decision change a reasonable amount of time after consensus has been reached, another discussion may be held to revert the changes."

Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 15:17, 16 July 2017 (EDT)

I know people will get pissy about what constitutes a "reasonable amount of time", though that's kind of unavoidable, so yep this looks good to me. - EndGenuity (talk) 13:36, 17 July 2017 (EDT)

Passing tomorrow if no one else has any issues. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 10:30, 17 July 2017 (EDT)