Wikiversity talk:Assembly/Full description

Thoughts while I read right now (not summarized, as they flow in; if they are already in that page, perhaps moving them somewhere else may be better?):
 * What other ways to seek consensus are there? Which ones are used (already) (un/successful) at WV?
 * example...
 * of usage of this Assembly concept somewhere else?
 * to a situation here at WV? Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 10:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * this should be higher in the page: "It will issue reports, which will be signed by users who approve them" because I was asking so, what will be visible by this, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 10:32, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * clerks seem to have more "powers"
 * a picture showing the structures (roles/products) would help I think
 * another thought was: what happens when someone reverts on such a subpage or writes unwanted things?, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 10:38, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I apparently missed this comment, it would have been my desire to respond promptly.
 * The Assembly concept arises out of study of standard deliberative process (such as Robert's Rules of Order, which requires a "chair") as it might be done on-wiki. It is normal for the person who calls an Assembly into existence to begin as chair, until an election is held.
 * Delegable proxy is a non-essential part of this proposal. It was designed to address and ameliorate the problem of "participation bias," which certainly afflict Wikipedia -- and other wikis. There is a form of delegable proxy, Asset voting, that was first proposed in about 1883 by Lewis Carroll, which disappeared from view until it was noticed in the early 2000s that certain proposals in the late 1990s on voting systems mailing lists ("Candidate proxy") were similar; and Asset Voting is similar to Delegable Proxy, except that Asset Voting, as generally proposed, uses secret ballot and can elect a fixed-size Assembly that is fully representative (or almost so) of the voting community, whereas Delegable Proxy doesn't create, by itself, a fixed Assembly. It has only been used once, in an election of a three-member steering committee, for the then-named Election Science Foundation (which became the Center for Election Science), with 17 voters and 5 candidates, and it worked spectacularly. The committee was elected with unanimous approval that it was fully representative; every voter either voted for a "winner" or for a candidate who transferred the vote to a winner. Would it work with larger groups? Probably. But we aren't using that, it hasn't been proposed yet. It is simply possible, once we start looking for ways to hybridize the wiki so that it becomes more stable and reliable.
 * Clerks have powers; the way the Assembly is structured, however, committee clerks only have special power on their committee pages, which are placed in their user space to fit with traditions about user control over their own user space. Essentially, clerks may blank material in their user space, and may ask users not to edit there.
 * However, if a clerk abuses that authority, anyone may form an independent committee, and clerk it. That will not cause harm. All it will do, if both committees actually function, is create multiple reports. Reports will be signed by those who approve them. Minority reports will be issued, and, indeed, there would be no way to stop it. However, consensus is powerful. A report that develops genuine consensus will naturally be more powerful than one that doesn't.
 * The Assembly page itself has a clerk. As the founder, that's me, but only by default. There should be at least one alternate. Any volunteers? The goal of the Assembly is consensus. If I run the Assembly, as clerk, unreasonably suppressing the participation of Wikiversity users, I'll be defeating the purpose. However, this is the safeguard: under the Assembly proposal and experiment, it is possible to have more than one Assembly page, with different clerks.
 * To see how this would work with a Wikversity resource, where otherwise there could have been revert warring and useless conflict, see a recent forking of Landmark Education. The top-level Assembly page would be rigorously neutral. Then there would be linked pages with responsible clerks. Suppose the two "Assemblies" each consider the same issue, but because of, say, some factional division of Wikiversity users, different users participate. Each faction generates a report. We may judge each reports in many ways: by the cogency of the arguments (and how the arguments are presented is a factor that cannot be neglected), by the users who supported each report, and, additionally, any interested person could analyze the support of each report in many ways: by the contribution history of participants, and, what's interesting, I think, by amalgamating this information using delegable proxy.
 * It is just information. But it would be information that could be used by a decider to guide the judgment of "consensus." Who is a decider?
 * This is a wiki. We all are. Key to the Delegable proxy concept, however is the consent to communication that exists between proxies and clients. If one ignores a genuine majority opinion, for example, one is risking alienating the actual community.
 * My understanding and belief and declaration is that most of us do want to see Wikiversity operating with genuine consensus, not an artificial consensus created by, say, driving away dissenting users. The Assembly is a process for making that more efficient. However, it will generally be slow, not "quick." It's long-term.
 * To complete the answers: clerks make ad hoc decisions about page content. We want to encourage and support clerks who do this, seeking consensus and clarity. The suggested process rules allow comment by any Wikiversity user on the attached talk pages, but only comment by registered members of the Assembly on actual committee pages. A clerk may exclude members from participation on the committee page, but not from commenting on Talk. Disruptive comments (i.e, uncivil, etc.) on all pages are subject to standard Wikiversity policy and practice.
 * A clerk may refactor content, but in so doing, should not be altering attributed comments in any way that implies the user wrote the refactored material. I.e., I might write that a specified user "discussed fair use issues" but if I quote the user, the quote should be accurate and not deceptive or cherry-picked, and should link to the original. Basic academic stuff, actually.
 * We have not seen a committee yet approach the report stage. Because there is a crying need to handle file licensing issues, that should change soon.
 * Thanks for asking, Erkan. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:15, 19 March 2014 (UTC)