User talk:Jerzy/On the style page thinger

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I think your "clarification" at the top of the page is kind of troublesome/unclear. What are you trying to say with it? The problem is that there is never going to -be- a 80% consensus on the issue - many people are entirely unflexible on the issue. A good example of the controversy spawned by this issue is jguk's undiscussed addition of styles to the list of honorifics in the biography page and the debate on the John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI pages. It is not something people comprimise on too well, and really there isn't a middle ground - we either include them or not, and we need an actual agreed-on policy for it. Right now it looks like people prefer not to preface articles with styles, but to include them somewhere in the artice, though the survey is far from over. I don't know what you consider to be a consensus, and it would be nice to know. The entire point of this survey is to stop the edit wars on certain pages over this issue. Some amount of clarification would be nice.
Titanium Dragon 00:48, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • It is definitely inappropriate to try to change the question being voted on after a large number of people have already voted.
Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:08, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
    • If that is what i have done (see below), then the whole thing was illegitimate before i did so, and must halt.
    --Jerzy (t) 05:06, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
    • I don't understand the long note Jerzy wrote on my talk page. Sentence by sentence I can kinda read it, but as a whole, I have no idea what point is being addressed/made. Actually, I also don't see how it manages to appear on my page at all... I guess I need to figure out what a "transclusion" is, and what the markup is to do that (or where it goes).
    Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:02, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
  • You (TD) say
I think your "clarification" at the top of the page is kind of troublesome/unclear. What are you trying to say with it?
Please tune up what i did if you think it needs it.
My primary intents were to head off for others two things i experienced:
  • misinformation from both
    • the (merely careless?) repeated use of the word "vote", and
    • reference to Condorcet, since, i think, most of the few who have heard of it regard it as a means not of measuring opinion but of making binding decisions;
  • indignation at that prospect of making policy via Condorcet.
I consider it a fact that WP policies cannot be made or modified (but see below) except by consensus, and i think any suggestion to the contrary must be definitively and promptly contradicted.
I also consider it inherant in that fact, that reasonable transparency and accessibility of participation mean a policy-changing process must be announced as a vote, and that a survey cannot be turned into a vote if it turns out to produce a consensus (not of the community willing to take time to vote, but only of people who had time to spare for something (a survey) of much less significance). When it is time to vote yes or no on policy, and only then, can reasonable notice be given that an occasion to participate in deciding policy is at hand.
Your expression "kind of troublesome/unclear" is, well, troublesome/unclear, by which i mean, here, hard to know how to respond to. I may have failed to say those things clearly on the WP talk page, in my effort to be concise, but i hope you do not suggest that the points i make in more detail here shouldn't be made there.
If you think
  • i am wrong in assuming good intent of whoever set up the survey, and
  • thus that my points are consistent with their intention,
then i probably chose the wrong point on the page, and you should probably fix the survey page in line with what you think the originator intended; in that case i will post roughly this version between the first section and the responses area, to argue instead that the intended thing must be halted.
You continue
The problem is ...
but i miss the transition, which is to say why that continuation is relevant to what you previously said. There's plenty each that i agree and disagree with in it, but i fear you threw it in based on a wrong inference about my intention, so i won't try to address the many points unless you want to clarify why you wanted to share them with me.
I will go so far as to say that IMO policies can be undone without consensus to do so, and thus the situation can be at least ameliorated by a proposal i'm working up, as a second, parallel, track (consistent with the survey as i understand it):
  • a vote or survey demonstrating that there is a state of non-confidence
  • toward any policy that all or most styles that have a verifiable following must or may be included in front of the name, unless it is later than the first mention and makes clear that inclusion or omission expresses an attitude on the part of the speaker or writer, and
  • toward (especially) failure to explicitly disown claims that such a policy furthers NPoV;
  • that would be followed by a vote that would provide an opportunity to demonstrate a consensus for that approach, and failing that, at the least demonstrate that enforcement of it as a policy is not viable.
--Jerzy (t) 05:06, 2005 May 7 (UTC)
  • The problem is, there was discussion on it before, on the talk page for the biography page. There has actually been debate in a number of articles over whether or not styles should be used. During one of these discussions, jguk unilaterally changed the honorifics section of the biography guideline page, adding several styles to the list of examples. Though I tried to fix this, he undid it, and after a while people did not realize that the change had been unilateral and without consensus; in fact, it was a matter of great debate in the John Paul II article.
The debate raised its head again in the Pope Benedict XVI article. Again, there were edit wars over the issue. Whig, a relatively new person to Wikipedia, realized there was a problem. After a discussion was started on the biography style talk page, eventually Whig organized a vote. We discussed what the options should be, and it was put up, and people have been trying to get input on it.
I'm not exactly sure what your problem is. I keep on losing your thread of thought. This is an attempt to FORM a consensus on the issue via this method. Wikipedia needs a unified biography format, and this is what is at issue. I did not originate the survey, Whig did. I just think you don't really understand what is being done here.
The effort is to form a consensus on the matter, and this method was a seemingly logical way of doing it. We either include styles before names or not - there is not really much middle ground there. Given the amount of controversy over Pope Benedict XVI's article, I wouldn't be suprised to see it be repeated over and over again in edit war after edit war.
Wikipedia apparently has some policy of including honorifics, but doesn't really speak about styles. I'm not really sure WHAT to make of it all. Honestly, no other encylopedia I've seen lists a pope as His holiness Pope Wotshisname. They are Pope Wotshisname. Other online encyclopedias, as well as Brittanica and a couple others I've looked at, follow this. The press does not refer to the Pope as "his holiness" in articles. Honestly, it doesn't seem NPOV to put styles before names, and this is why I oppose it, and many others (in fact, a slight majority) seem to agree with me on the issue.
You seem to have jumped in without really looking at it. I've seen votes all over Wikipedia, and decisions made on the basis of aforementioned votes. I don't think it is unprecedented, and there's not another way I can think of to resolve the issue. The sides are split and it has resulted in a number of edit wars, and no comprimises. Do you have another, better idea? If so, you should suggest it.
Titanium Dragon 11:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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