No Agreement On Wiki

There are a number of ways to express disagreement on wiki. You can explain your point of view, you can argue against the other position, you can criticize the author, you can delete the entire section, or you can ignore it entirely. Some approaches add signal, some remove noise, others make matters worse. In any case, though, there are options. In contrast, there is no good way to express agreement. Unless you can expand upon the material presented, there is nothing left for you to say. Adding applause and saying MeToo, at least, are of extremely limited value. In short, whether or not you believe SilenceConfersLegitimacy?, it is certainly the case that most legitimate arguments can only be responded to with silence.

Why one should be obsessed with disagreement and expounding a personal position or opinion in such a space as this, is beyond me. It has always been my position that the wiki is a place for the meeting of the minds, where agreement, consensus and reliance on truth and fact have a higher premium than that of disagreement, polarization and forceful and prolonged argumentation. The wiki has high hopes, and is basically a NobleExperiment, which relies on the positive attributes of communicating towards agreement, not towards hostility and name calling. Those who remain here over the long haul see the importance of it being a PositiveDialogueCommunity. If it is to be such, it will be so because those who are involved have agreed in the value of the approach, and see communication towards mutually agreed conclusions as the primary aim, rather than viewing discourse as a battle ground and the participants as winners or losers. It is a place where a win-win mentality produces meaningful signal that has lasting value to readers as well as to the writing participants. -- AnonymousOnPurpose

That's all well and good, but I'm not saying there shouldn't be agreement on wiki. I'm saying the the nature of the medium makes it very difficult to express agreement, and very easy to express disagreement. That this place often functions as a battleground, instead of the ideal community you describe, is partly a result of this. That is, this is a description of a problem, not a prescription for ideal functioning.

The difficulty in reaching agreement can be expressed as being inherent in such a media as this, but that doesn't make it so. Agreement or disagreement are in the intentions of the writers and responders. My contention is that if one makes a statement couched in confrontational language, or based in contention, that it is unlikely that agreement will be reached. However if one makes statements which one believes are based on rational, factual and supportable matters, it is much more likely that agreement will be reached by discussion, correction and dialogue. I have responded on this page on the belief that what is meant by the title is something like "How can we reach agreeement on Wiki?" -- AnonymousOnPurpose

Disagreement is inevitable. This wiki is a place to come to get both or multiple sides to the story. Disagreement itself is not the problem; it is how one goes about disagreeing. Some people get personal. If you disagree with an opinion, state so, give your reasoning, and move on. AgreeToDisagree and be a gentlemen (or gentlewomen). It seems some feel they have to expose or punish the other party to prevent the spread of some kind of wiki disease.

See AgreementOnWiki

CategoryWiki