You are receiving this message because you are on the update list for Palestine-Israel articles 5. The drafters note that the scope of the case was somewhat unclear, and clarify that the scope is The interaction of named parties in the WP:PIA topic area and examination of the WP:AE process that led to tworeferrals to WP:ARCA. Because this was unclear, two changes are being made:
First, the Committee will accept submissions for new parties for the next three days, until 23:59, 10 December 2024 (UTC). Anyone who wishes to suggest a party to the case may do so by creating a new section on the evidence talk page, providing a reason with WP:DIFFS as to why the user should be added, and notifying the user. After the three-day period ends, no further submission of parties will be considered except in exceptional circumstances. Because the Committee only hears disputes that have failed to be resolved by the usual means, proposed parties should have been recently taken to AE/AN/ANI, and either not sanctioned, or incompletely sanctioned. If a proposed party has not been taken to AE/AN/ANI, evidence is needed as to why such an attempt would have been ineffective.
Peace is a state of balance and understanding in yourself and between others, where respect is gained by the acceptance of differences, tolerance persists, conflicts are resolved through dialog, people's rights are respected and their voices are heard, and everyone is at their highest point of serenity without social tension. Happy Holidays to you and yours. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 22:58, 16 December 2024 (UTC)
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"The best way to reduce non-collaborative approaches is to design the process to make them ineffective"
Out of interest, how would you suggest one makes non-collaborative approaches ineffective? In consensus-based decision making, it seems non-collaborative approaches would be very effective (depending on what one is trying to achieve), so I can't imagine how you'd discourage it. I've always thought consensus-based processes only work if either all participants act collaboratively, or if N is large. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:47, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote about the challenges with using consensus to manage discussions back in 2015. It does not scale upwards as N grows large, which is why in the real world, communities don't make decisions through large consensus discussions. As I wrote on the workshop talk page, in the context of English Wikipedia, I think some form of delegation is needed to deal with complex disputes. At a simpler level, though, I've discussed fostering collaborative behaviour, and documented some potential approaches to use. Ultimately, trying to manage all decisions through unmoderated, consensus-based discussions isn't effective. But we're in a catch-22 where the current decision making tradition is the only way to change to a different one, and for now, many editors worry less about its effectiveness than diminishing their ability to influence decisions. isaacl (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose it's no longer 'consensus' anymore, but when I said or if N is large I was thinking more along the lines of RfCs with surveys/polls. These seem to 'work' at settling issues, with large N. Though, they aren't suited for deliberative thinking on a matter, and many (most?) topics don't attract enough attention for N to get large, and no consensus results are possible.
Whether they deliver good results is also a different matter. On some occassions, in contentious topics specifically, I feel like they've worked better at reaching decent compromise solutions, or at least at settling questions, than informal discussions with small N, where not all participants are collaborative or (for other reasons) simply cannot reach a compromise.
I've read those articles before, but in contentious topic situations, to me it seems like the only relevant solution would be Pros and cons summary of options? With the others, I can't immediately think of disputes that would've proceeded better with those solutions. The first sounds like WP:DRN to me? But from my observations, I've not seen that process work often, and can't imagine it working in PIA. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you're basing the decision on numerical count, then that's a vote, which I listed on the workshop talk page as one of the ways to make a decision.
I think a round-robin discussion phase with a moderator guiding discussion to build up a pros and cons summary would be a lot like what is done in the real world, and would help avoid a discussion being swamped by one or more contributors. It would facilitate moving the discussion from individuals arguing with each other to building up agreement on individual points, one at a time. (It's basically like the process that was followed by the mediation committee.) But it requires investment in time and prolonged engagement, and has problems of scale as well. If the arguing sides could agree on delegates who they trusted to represent their positions, then it might be manageable. It would of course still progress slowly and require patience. A revisit respite after a decision is made would prevent eternal discussion when there are no new points to cover. isaacl (talk) 22:52, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One other aspect of the decision-making process that I covered on the workshop talk page was having a decision-maker (be it one person or a group). I know many editors are deadset against this approach. But it makes being disruptive a clear losing strategy, since it doesn't help convince the only people who need to be convinced. Perhaps there is some mix of a decision-maker group and guided, moderated discussion that could get enough support for implementation. But it's not clear to me what that mix is, or if enough old guard editors would be convinced to relinquish the veto power provided by the current consensus-based decision-making traditions, unless some crisis appears. isaacl (talk) 23:04, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
