Wikivoyage talk:Consensus/Draft

Purpose

There seem to be two separate issues that need to be addressed in our current consensus-building process:

1. Our current definition of "consensus" seems to be a good one - it is not a vote, but a discussion where individuals are trying to come to an acceptable compromise. In some places it has been misconstrued that "consensus" means unanimity here.
2. HOWEVER, the majority of our discussions fail to come to any resolution, partially because we have no process for focusing and resolving lengthy discussions, and partially because it isn't easy to determine the result of a discussion when there isn't an obvious consensus. This process results in frustration from everyone involved, and potentially makes objectors hesitant to express their objections for fear of derailing the discussion.

To address this problem, in cases where a discussion is not straightforward enough to gain a very clear consensus, such as when arguments essentially boil down to differences of opinion and there really isn't a compromise position, we need a way to structure the discussion. Currently Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion is an example of where we do this well, and I think something similar needs to be introduced for cases where an obvious consensus is not reached via discussion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:21, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I've outlined some ideas in Wikivoyage:Consensus/Draft#How to build consensus about how to deal with cases which a discussion meanders and it isn't clear whether there is any consensus or not. I based it on Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion, which is a place where we often have meandering discussions but they always lead to some sort of resolution. The goal is to develop a way to handle the very common case where a proposal languishes indefinitely - in such cases I think people get frustrated and would prefer that there be some sort of closure, even if it is "don't change anything", rather than having the discussion stay in the limbo state we currently end up in. This draft needs a bit more thought and tweaking, but hopefully it will be ready to move out of userspace soon so that we have something to discuss when proposals to change our existing consensus-building process are mentioned. -- Ryan • (talk) • 06:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Nice work!

The policy's looking really good - thanks for taking a look at this! --Nick ^talk 03:07, 8 January 2014 (UTC)