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Conversation conclusion The Five Pillars should remain as-is Main arguments: A sixth pillar, consensus, should be created

Consensus

Everyone knows that en.wikipedia runs by Consensus, but that fact isn't mentioned on this page. Aaaaand I've just been talking to some outsiders who were very confused about that. So I've added an extra sentence, please feel free to tidy things a little. --Kim Bruning 15:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't know if I helped really, by adding a quibblable US/UK spelling (summarizsed), but 'fundament' is (more commonly?) something you land on post-banana-peel, so I took that out ;) --Quiddity 20:06, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

"foundation" maybe? --Kim Bruning 07:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I think running by establishing consusus is more of a means to an end. I don't think it is a central enough goal or tenet of the project to be mentioned in the five pillars. Johntex\^talk 07:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The 5 pillars page was created by means of consensus, in fact. Is that sufficient for now? --Kim Bruning 08:20, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that consensus should be mentioned in the five pillars. Without the fully application of the consensus, we can all go home. Wikipedia cannot live without consensus, and it's that that made it what it is now. The consensus rule allow every one of us to "fight" for a better wikipedia. Try to ask yourself these questions:

• Can we have made a encyclopedia with over one hundreds millions contributions from three milions and half users without the consensus mechanism or will have we stopped earlier?
• Can we reach neutral point of view without consensus?
• Can we enjoy editing wikipedia without the consensus rule?

In my opinion, consensus is the "creator" of four of the five pillars.

1. A collaborative encyclopedia, Nupedia has proved it, cannot work without consensus. I think that everyone can agree that an encyclopedia written with the wiki style cannot be effectively "ruled" by anything except consensus.
2. A neutral point of view cannot be, in my humble opinion, obtained by anything except consensus.
3. This is the only pillar which, in my opinion doesn't strictly depends on consensus.
4. Consensus is behind even the "Wikiquette". If our community, because everything is a community, on the net and in the life, wouldn't be ruled by consensus, we wouldn't be so polite and friendly. If the "power to choose" isn't ours, we cannot be relaxed and good faith assuming, probably.
5. And even the last five pillar, the no firm rules, be bold and so on, rely on consensus. Because consensus is the first and binding rule, the only one we cannot forget. If we forget it, we are lost.

I think that we should add one more pillar, and also make it the first one. Consensus, in my opinion, is the first pillar.

Happy Editing by Snowolf^(talk) on 23:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

These are all means the ends which are listed here in the five pillars. —Centrx→talk • 00:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, well, if you want to make consensus a central pillar, you might want to make a slightly different arrangement altogether. What would you be thinking of? See if you can sketch it here :-) --Kim Bruning 01:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus is not a pillar at all, and the pillars here do not derive from consensus. All consensus is directed toward satisfying Wikipedia's fundamental principles as a free, neutral encyclopedia. Furthermore, consensus cannot over-ride, for example, foundation principles like Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and freeness (or for the matter the legal situation of existing content under the GFDL). Consensus cannot make Wikipedia into an advertisement service or a telephone directory. Consensus is opposite to the chaos of having no code of conduct. In that consensus can change, consensus is also opposite to having firm rules. Consensus is subordinate to and in every situation contingent upon satisfying Wikipedia's fundamental principles. If there is a principle here that can be changed by consensus, then it is not actually a fundamental principle. —Centrx→talk • 23:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

m:Foundation issues are a consensus across all wikimedia communities, so they are indeed very hard to change. Though if you see the page history, you'll see that they do in fact change with consensus over time. --Kim Bruning 23:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The basic points are identical since the creation of that page. There are extrapolations and ramifications added and revised, but fundamental principles (or "pillars") there are identical. We can say here that "encyclopedia", "neutral", "free", "sane conduct", "not firm rules" are the pillars, and these have been true since the start, while the other text on this page is description and extrapolation (or, a fitting of the principles to the particular policy pages we have now). Once you change "encyclopedia" to "phonebook", Wikipedia is no longer "Wikipedia". Pillars are unchanging and unchangeable. —Centrx→talk • 00:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are several approaches to summarizing the wikipedia guidelines. See WP:SR and WP:TRI. --Kim Bruning 10:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Neither of those even pretend to list fundamental pillars of Wikipedia. WP:SR is a summary of all major policies and guidelines. WP:TRI simply assumes the obvious "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" and ignores "Wikipedia is free" because it is not one of "three basic guiding principles for editors" (except insofar as it intersects the other obvious one, "Wikipedia is not a venue for illegal activities"). —Centrx→talk • 15:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

And yet this approach to summarizing was first used on WP:TRI, and this page is merely an evolutionary improvement to that. There are many ways to reduce the number of rules people need to learn. That's not to say this page isn't really cool, but there may yet be cooler ways to meet the objective of reducing the number of pages one needs to read. --Kim Bruning 21:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This is irrelevant to whether Wikipedia:Consensus is at the foundation of Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 17:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

All these approaches (including 5P) were arrived at by the wiki-process, (foundation issue #3). Consensus is the key component of the wiki-process. --Kim Bruning 20:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

These are simply different pages about the same thing. The principles they refer to were not arrived at by the wiki-process, but are inherent in the concept of a wiki encyclopedia. —Centrx→talk • 20:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

How was the wiki-encyclopedia invented? --Kim Bruning 21:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

subsection 1

---

copied from User talk:Centrx

Even the foundation issues are founded on the principle of consensus. Several were in fact designed on the basis of consensus on meatballwiki or wikiwikiweb, or based on consensus and concessions across 3 encyclopedia communities, etc . Consensus is ubiquitous and fundamental to wikis, and several other internet processes in general, and is very hard to escape. --Kim Bruning 23:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus is based on fundamental principles. The exact ramifications of various policies were reached by consensus, but those policies and that consensus is already done under the basic premise of some general notion of a free encyclopedia. Once it is decided that 'Wikipedia is free encyclopedia', that cannot be changed without making it no longer 'Wikipedia'. There might be some consensus to do something different, but that becomes 'Wiktionary', etc. If theoretical pillars are changed, Wikipedia becomes something entirely different from what it has been since the beginning, and it is destroyed. If Wikipedia were no longer 'encyclopedia' or 'neutral' or 'free', it would mean that Wikipedia is gone and there would anyway quickly be a fork. If there were some change in 'free', it would mean that every article would need to be restarted from the beginning. If there were some change in 'sane conduct', no encyclopedia or any other project could ever work. If Wikipedia suddenly had 'firm rules', it would contradict "consensus". —Centrx→talk • 00:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

---

subsection 2

The fundamental issues are based on consensus because they were arrived at by consensus. Because the consensus is carried by so many people, there is inertia and it is unlikely to change much. But the foundation issues do change slowly! For instance: Anthere now has the last word, rather than Jimbo; There is now an arbitration committee; some people think fair use is ok in a free encyclopedia; etc. As to the 5 pillars: those were arrived at by consensus. (Recovered the timeline for you, with a lot of help!) --Kim Bruning 10:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Recovered the timeline at Wikipedia talk:Simplified Ruleset#Historic information --Kim Bruning 11:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

They were not arrived at by the sort of consensus described at Wikipedia:Consensus, and they are not changeable by the sort of consensus at Wikipedia:Consensus.

5P is one of the things I'm most proud about on wikipedia, and the changes that were recently made to wp:consensus actually reflect some of the process that was used here. You're saying there's more to it, and wp:consensus doesn't cover the process entirely? Alright, what kinds of changes can we make so that we describe consensus more accurately? --Kim Bruning 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus on articles, or revert rules, or inclusion criteria is wholly different from consensus about fundamental pillars of Wikipedia. Even if Wikipedia:Consensus were changed to reflect this different, it would be misleading to conflate the two here and to refer to these pillars as being a result of the same sort of consensus as for article content. —Centrx→talk • 03:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

There are 2 or more forms of consensus? I don't know whether I agree, but I'm willing to listen. I suspect that it would not fit in the width of this margin, however. ;-) Could you make a section on Wikipedia talk:Consensus and elaborate on that? --Kim Bruning 16:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It's quite clear. Consensus on an individual article does not override policies and guidelines. Neutral point of view is "absolute and non-negotiable". In order to change these pillars, there would need to be a total destruction of what Wikipedia is, making it something it is not. —Centrx→talk • 17:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I told Slimvirgin that that wording was going to be misread, but she's stubborn that way, and I didn't want to push the point. :-P The intent there is that you can't simply decide to ignore global consensus one fine day. You can certainly renegotiate details of NPOV on the NPOV page, or on meta, or what have you.

Destroying wikipedia by ignoring the five pillars you say? Ah, nope, there's at least 3 other formulations that are more or less valid. I'm personally using one of the other formulations right now. --Kim Bruning 20:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• The pillars are the ultimate global consensus and renegotiating "details" of NPOV is entirely different from eliminating NPOV, which would be the case if these pillars were "renegotiated". This is not a misreading.

And yet some people say that verifiability and reliable sources might supplant NPOV, as together they form a more reliable formulation. (These are the same people who added "non negotiable" wording to all three... which at some point is going to bite them in the rear. Not my problem for now though ;) )

• WP:IAR specifically includes "improving or maintaining Wikipedia". That is, any ignoring of rules requires that the purpose of Wikipedia as encyclopedia must be the reason for ignoring them. IAR does not simply say "Disregard all rules" and it does not mean that Wikipedia can be turned into a porn site under IAR. All actions must not conflict with these pillars. —Centrx→talk • 21:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Argh. I was part of the group who negotiated that particular wording. Now I understand why folks like Elian and Anthere preferred to leave the "improving or maintaining wikipedia" out of it. I never ever ever thought I'd get bitten by that. Once again, these pillars are just something someone made up as a useful summary. They were never intended as a religeon! Oh no! --Kim Bruning 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the theoretical issues, it is misleading to say that "Neutral point of view" is arrived at or changeable in the same way that Wikipedia:Reliable sources is, or even in the same way that the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view page is.

You mean the concept versus the page? That's a very good point. Wikipedia:Consensus does not yet fully describe how consensus based processes come about, nor does it describe the optimal way to record descriptions of those processes. Perhaps you could come help out with that? Note that consensus and wiki-editing are probably more fundamental than NPOV, since we have several wikis which do not require NPOV but operate just fine. Of course, once you try to use your wiki to make an encyclopedia, NPOV suddenly becomes very important. But you can't deny that you're still working on a wiki. --Kim Bruning 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, the encyclopedia. Neutrality is fundamental. —Centrx→talk • 03:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Before it was wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, it was a blank mediawiki install on an as yet unnamed server. ;-) After that, Sanger and Wales and etc. started adding pages and developing ideas that would one day become a standalone encyclopedia.

Also the following conversation at WikiWikiWeb:WikiPedia:

"My question, to this esteemed Wiki community, is this: Do you think that a Wiki could successfully generate a useful encyclopedia?" -- JimboWales

"Yes, but in the end it wouldn't be an encyclopedia. It would be a wiki." -- WardCunningham"

--Kim Bruning 16:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

What about it? Someone decided to have an encyclopedia. Once created, it cannot be changed into something different without destroying what it is. It cannot be changed by "consensus", which is vague enough already. —Centrx→talk • 17:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry that policy is not clearer. I try to improve policy clarity a little bit every day. Both Wikipedia:Consensus and this page have been part of that effort. While working on the consensus page, I noticed a small oversight on this one, pointed out to me by someone on svwiki, in fact.

And of course wikipedia is now what it is. But I'm confused. Why deny the existence of the process which was used to create it? --Kim Bruning 20:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus was not the process used to invent Wikipedia. The invention of Wikipedia as wiki encyclopedia is a decision made prior to and outside of any rules of Wikipedia. There was discussion in Nupedia about inventing Wikipedia. Wikipedia was ultimately a re-invention of Nupedia. It contradicted the principles of Nupedia and Wikipedia was part of the destruction of Nupedia. If the principles of Wikipedia were contradicted by some "consensus", it would be the destruction of Wikipedia, even if something were to remain even under the same name. Ultimately, too, the "process" used to create Wikipedia is meaningless without someone to host the servers, install the software, and support it intellectually. That is, the process used to create Wikipedia was not consensus; the process was: Someone wanted to have a wiki encyclopedia and spent time and money to make it happen. Furthermore, others thought it was a good idea too and participated, because it was a wiki encyclopedia. —Centrx→talk • 21:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I already linked you to the key discussion, it was on wikiwikiweb. Wikiwikiweb is a wiki. Wikiwikiweb is a wiki that uses consensus.

After that, people still needed to figure out the details of how to make an encyclopedia using a wiki. People started with usemodwiki software. Eventually new wiki software was written (mediawiki). Early on, people also experimented with other methods of decision making, possibly due to NIH syndrome. Consensus was settled on. I've already referred you to User:Jdforrester if you'd like to ask for more details. --Kim Bruning 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The way this was described above is to mention consensus decision-making on this page, not to superinclude all the pillars under it, and the two ideas of consensus are different.

I realize the difference. I'm curious what kind of summary we'd come up with if that was tried. --Kim Bruning 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The creation of the encyclopedia as encyclopedia pre-exists policy here. It has a place in some history, but not as theoretical all-inclusive foundation of Wikipedia. Consensus is based on these pillars. —Centrx→talk • 17:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Not quite. Wikipedia was not originally intended to be the actual encyclopedia itself, as you should know (to an extent, wikipedia was intended as the draft version of nupedia). --Kim Bruning 20:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

See above. I see no conflict here. —Centrx→talk • 21:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Has Anthere or the Arbitration Committee changed any of these pillars? The one example you give, of freeness, is actually being further enforced by recent Foundation decision, and the GFDL is regardless not open to any changes by consensus.

These are items in the m:foundation issues, which our guidelines *must* comply with. The foundation issues also serve as an example in that they're the least mutable guidelines we have.

As for the GFDL, there is no reason to believe that the upcoming FSF process for updating the GFDL will not be open for input. Even so, you could design a process-set where "GFDL" is not mentioned, and yet might still be valid wrt foundation issues. (The trivial but ugly example would be to include the body text of the GFDL into the policy-set in toto) --Kim Bruning 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Any updated version of the GFDL must "be similar in spirit to the present version", it may only "differ in detail to address new problems or concerns". A new license cannot be used on Wikipedia without throwing out all existing pages. —Centrx→talk • 17:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

That's what dual-licensing is for, which is something that was introduced several years after wikipedia was started. (I strongly suspect at the behest of Lawrence Lessig, he has admitted as much. He has since changed tack somewhat, and is cooperating with Eben Moglen more.)

Dual-licensing died after Ram-Bot stopped spamming people about it. Regardless, even with dual-licensing, or even if Wikipedia had used some free license other than the GFDL, it is free and the least constrictive license can always be chosen. For anything dual-licensed to be "GFDL" and "all rights reserved", a user can choose to use it under "GFDL". —Centrx→talk • 21:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Dual-licences are now available in a handy dandy pull-down menu nowadays. At least for images. No idea why you'd think they are dead. --Kim Bruning 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The timeline you give is a timeline of the creation of this particular page; it is not a timeline of the principles of Wikipedia, which stem entirely from "free encyclopedia" and exist from the start. —Centrx→talk • 15:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a good point. This page is a simplification of policy. The principles on which it is based are older. Those principles also revolve around consensus, however. That's one of the reasons why it was so simple and easy to use a consensus process to summarize them.

If you'd like to try a different tack... if you view WP:NOT, you will see that wikipedia is not a dictatorship, democracy, or anarchy. So how was our system arrived at? It didn't happen by magic. --Kim Bruning 20:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

These principles do not "revolve" around consensus. They arise directly from the fundamental purpose of Wikipedia, which is unchanging. Consensus does not change Wikipedia from an encyclopedia into something else. The system was arrived at by like-minded people working towards a common goal. Once it is decided that Wikipedia is a "free encyclopedia", participants are attracted to and adhere to that goal. If it had been decided that Wikipedia be a "peer-reviewed methodical top-down encyclopedia", i.e. Nupedia, it would be a different beast to which few are attracted and, once changed, it is no longer Nupedia but Wikipedia. All consensus is in reference to these basic principles here. Consensus does not create or alter them. —Centrx→talk • 03:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll take this one step at a time. How did we come to the point of having wikipedia, the free encyclopedia? (I've already been adding quotes and links from history, so possibly you have enough clues already ;-) ) --Kim Bruning 16:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The encyclopedia is already created. If the same sort of decision-making were to take place that created the encyclopedia, it would create a new entity. It would not be Wikipedia. It would not be created through Wikipedia:Consensus. —Centrx→talk • 17:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus decision making was already present fairly early on on wikipedia, and definately helped form many early guidelines. It might be handy to also talk with User:Jdforrester on that topic, since he was involved in a lot of early guideline formation. --Kim Bruning 20:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

That's at least two years after the creation of the encyclopedia, two years after it was posted to Slashdot and Kuro5hin, and two years after I applied to proofread articles on Nupedia. In 2001, it was quite clear what a general-purpose encyclopedia was and what open-content was. The writing of text in guideline pages two years after it was clear to every intelligent person what a free encyclopedia was, is irrelevant to what a free encyclopedia is. There would not even be a need for any "official policies" or anything beyond unmarked Wikipedia-space pages with advice, if it were not for various idiots. —Centrx→talk • 21:27, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Now that much I agree on ;-) So now, how do we write out what we already know in an as efficient a way as possible? That's the key objective I'm trying to fulfill. I'll drop everything else if you can explain a better way to do this. --Kim Bruning 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Agree with Centrx. It is about agreement and what we "signed on for". The Pillars form the basic agreement of what we are doing, what we are creating, and where we are going. Every editor here should be familiar with them, and should edit in accordance with them. They stand above "consensus" if by "consensus" we mean the normal (to wikipedia) non-representative sampling of those few editors that have a particular page in their watch list, notice the change, and are interested enough to comment. IMO, the Pillars do not so much represent a distillation of policy and procedure as they do the gold standard that all policy and procedure must align to. Sorry if this comes across as "undemocratic" but "wikipedia is not a democracy". --Justanother 17:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Um, not to put to fine a point on it, but WP:5P is just a page me and some of my friends made up. Though it's great to hear people are taking it to heart. :-) For the actual sign-up brochure, see m:Foundation issues. I hope you do agree with that page. --Kim Bruning 20:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
    • No, the contents of the page is agreed by nearly everyone who edits here. Don't confuse "My friends and I wrote most of the text of this page" with "My friends and I defined the pillars of Wikipedia", which is what he agrees to. If it were merely something you "made up" and it were in conflict with the principles of Wikipedia, it would never have been accepted or allowed to stay. If "your friends" had not written it, someone else would have in reference to those same principles. If there did not exist such a page, the principles would still be there inherent in what is a wiki encyclopedia. —Centrx→talk • 20:29, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to formulate get a life in a more polite manner. :-/

The "pillars" page is just one of several ways to simplify policy.

The 5 pillars page is very nice, and I'm not going to deny it's important, but importantly, it's not our m:foundation issues. I am slightly scared to hear people confusing the two! --Kim Bruning 20:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure about the "get a life" bit. Is that your standard answer to editors that disagree with you? --Justanother 21:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

No! More like I feel like things I've worked on are being worshipped too much. (I feel a bit like William Shatner right now ^^;;). I did want to try to be a little more polite than he was though! --Kim Bruning 22:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

And Kim, if what you really meant by that unabashed effort to marginalize me is that I am missing and not addressing the real point of this discussion, then just say so. And if you would be kind enough to correct me then that would be fine too. I am a pretty bright guy and I might have something to contribute.

My apologies for making you feel that way. :-( --Kim Bruning 22:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I will say that the meta foundation issues would not be all-inclusive of the fundamental policies of the encyclopedia; i.e. m:foundation issues is not a sufficient statement of the basic principles here on wikipedia. I thought the Pillars served that purpose. Perhaps I was mistaken. --Justanother 21:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Now that's an interesting point. It's just that I've never seen the five pillars quite that way. It's quite humbling. It might be good in one way, and maybe less good in another. Let me think about that. --Kim Bruning 22:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Apology accepted. Thanks. Re worship, all due respect but please do not confuse the common purpose that binds us with the written description of it. The word is not the thing. Personally, the only reason I expend as much effort as I do here is because I believe in that purpose and believe that that purpose can overcome those that seek to make wikipedia a propaganda medium for hate and a mirror of their biased websites. As far as the writing down of it; it looked OK (smile). --Justanother 22:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Procedural Revert

• Wikipedia:Consensus says make a change first, and then discuss.
• Bold revert discuss says to not accept a revert "back to consensus version"

The irony here is even thicker, since you're removing the statement in 5P that says you're allowed to use consensus to change the page in the first place ;-). --Kim Bruning 15:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You made a new change. The old version is the consensus version. A brief discussion in which no one agreed to the change you actually made does not create a new consensus. You were bold by making that new change, and then it was reverted, so now you must discuss it not revert to your new version repeatedly. —Centrx→talk • 17:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The old version has been here since the creation of this page in 2005. That your new change, which had no discussion supporting what you actually implemented, was not reverted for 9 days does not suddenly make it the "consensus" version. Follow your own guidelines. —Centrx→talk • 17:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hoist by my own petard several times in a row, eh?

This is frustrating. I know consensus belongs in that spot. I can't believe this wasn't spotted in 2005 (actually, no, wait, I can. If there's an entire (sub)community approved guideline that can only be found in deletion history in one spot, anything can happen...but I digress). At any rate, I wanted to just add the clarification, and now it seems I'm being told that the page I was involved in in the first place is now considered handed down from the heavens. --Kim Bruning 21:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC) "consensus version" was a bad joke, since the version I reverted to actually mentioned consensus :-P

If consensus had been put in that spot at the beginning, it would have been taken out at some point because it is wrong. Consensus was not there at the top from the beginning, and thousands of people did not see a deficiency. An explanation of this is in the introduction to Wikipedia:Consensus. Anyway, the fact is that any "consensus" has to be based on fundamental principles. Consensus does not come out of thin air based on what people "want". Consensus only results when you have people with a common goal. That common goal is described here. —Centrx→talk • 21:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted the lead to the short version, but attempted to incorporate consensus into the 4th pillar. Alternative ideas seem more fruitful than back-and-forthing.

Feel free to revert my addition, but I do believe Centrx is right, in that the short version is the one that has consensus (it's the original), even if it doesn't mention it! I'm not sure where you (Kim) are seeing Bold revert discuss say "to not accept a revert "back to consensus version""?(unless you're attempting wordplay on consensus being the subject and object of our discussion, and hence confusing us all greatly!) You were bold, Centrx reverted, and now we're discussing, as far as i can see..? :) --Quiddity 18:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough as far as process goes ;-).

Consensus is not an alternative for WP:BOLD of course. WP:BOLD is only one (very small) element of consensus. (In fact, it's the first box under "start" in the flowchart... I didn't think of labeling the boxes with links to guidelines... an interesting idea). I haven't drawn a guideline creation flowchart yet. When I do, it'll probably be based on the process of creating WP:5P, in fact (since I was involved, I know how this process worked and why).

The overall reason I put consensus in the top is because it's a clarification of how (this page and) all policy was created. It is implicit in all wikipedia guidelines. It wasn't handed down from on high on clay tablets!

The immediate reason is because people on svwikis don't quite have this entire consensus thing down pat quite yet, and pointed the problem out to me. Forgetting to mention how consensus is related to the 5 pillars is indeed a pretty odd oversight! --Kim Bruning 20:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus is how the pages are created, yes, but not fundamental principles or these pillars. —Centrx→talk • 20:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

So how did those principles emerge then? Magic? Dictated by god? I'm sure some of the old wikipedians would love to hear that one ;-) --Kim Bruning 21:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Remember, the Pillars that can be written are not the true Pillars. A joke but what you so unflatteringly cast as my n00b worship of something you and your friends thought up during a commercial actually goes a bit deeper, I think. No, I cannot speak with first-hand experience of the beginning of wikipedia but I can speak with first-hand experience of the harmful, hateful, and biased piece of crap that this project can turn into if the basic principles it is built on are not enforced (yes, the "E-word"). So call them Pillars or call them Lugnuts (my earlier suggestion) but if they are not held inviolable and not as something that a few can change under the misnomer of "consensus, then the wheels are falling off this project. --Justanother 21:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Or alternately, the wheels have rusted into an unmovable lump. (If you use the wheel analogy, remember that wheels do need to be able to turn freely ;-) --Kim Bruning 12:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Poll

I was bold and started a poll on the subject. This may be the only way to find consensus on the issue as discussion has taken place for a couple months. The poll is at Wikipedia talk:Five pillars/Consensus poll. Thanks! Greeves ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:36, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. Decisions on Wikipedia are not made by polling. Your poll is meaningless. —Centrx→talk • 17:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

upheld by, vs reduced or summarised

The 5 pillars are supposed to be a reduction of the rules to a few basic principles. if we just use them as a basis for 500 new ones, we might be somewhat off the mark wrt the original process that made them. (And may have to start anew? Willing to hear other opinions.

--Kim Bruning 12:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Update

Since WP:NOR and WP:V are now of historical interest only, having been superseded by WP:A, I've given up waiting for someone to update this page, and have boldly revised the first pillar. OK? .. dave souza, talk 14:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

That now seems to be a matter of debate.--Henrygb 12:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)