Is 60 percent a good threshold for Wikipedia consensus?
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Provided that the only votes counted are those that met the argumentation requirement rather than posting argument-free support or oppose, is 60% of the supports to supports plus opposes a good threshold for Wikipedia consensus? Some wikis such as the English Wiktionary use 2/3 = 66.6%.
60 percent is a good threshold for Wikipedia consensus
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Pro With too high a threshold, there is too high an incentive to work around open processes such as votes and requests for comments for the fear that they fail. Too high a threshold creates too big a bias against change. At the same time, 60% rather than 50% prevents changes that could oscillate to and fro depending on which group of editors happened to join the request for comments or a vote.- Pro 2/3 is too high a threshold since it grants a superminority power to enforce the historical status quo, which often is not based on anything like 2/3-support either.
- Pro 2/3 is too high especially for cosmetic or matter-of-taste changes.
Objection True, but the motion concerns all changes, not just cosmetic ones.
Con
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Con If the argument for the voted motion or change is genuinely strong, it should be able to garner, say, 2/3 support quite easily.
- Objection That may sound plausible, but a truly strong argument should be able to garner even 80% support, yet experience shows that even good proposals all too often struggle to gain 2/3 support.
- Con The threshold of 2/3 provides a better guard against bad changes than 60%. It assumes that lack of change is generally more acceptable than an introduction of a bad change. For instance, the bad vote wikt:Wiktionary:Votes/2019-05/Excluding self-evident "attributive form of" definitions for hyphenated compounds was one oppose vote away from not passing given the 2/3 threshold, but would easily pass with 60% threshold.
- Objection The other way around, when a non-voted inferior practice becomes entrenched, and could be turned over by 61% supermajority but not 2/3 supermajority, the higher threshold fails to guard against bad non-change. The linked vote implied that a near 2/3-supermajority can be wrong, which it surely can, but a 1/3-superminority can in general more easily be wrong, and that wrong 1/3-superminority can prevent good things from happening with 2/3 threshold.
- Objection The initial state in wiki is usually lack of regulation and considerable leeway. Compared to bad rigid regulations, that need not be such a bad state of affairs. It is this somewhat chaotic and common-law-like state of affairs that is prevented from being overturned by a bad rigid rule supported by, say, 61% supermajority.
- Objection It may be a rigid state of affairs that becomes entrenched.
- Objection Specifically for requests for deletion in Wiktionary, the default is keep. Here, what is per default entrenched is keep. If one is an inclusionist, one would be expected to welcome the higher 2/3 threshold for deletion in general; clear sum of part entries will get deleted anyway but the more controversial cases have a better chance to be kept.
- Con 60% fails to meet the common meaning of the word consensus.
- Objection True. However, Wikipedia abuses the word "consensus" away. The question is whether the resulting process is good, not whether it is properly called "consensus".
