Its clear no one was interested in this in first. Including the the couple of people doing the reverting. Since they where obviously making a much bigger deal out of it then it is. The whole reason this discussion is happening is to satisfy those people. So the thing was a waste of all our times in the first place. Since they could have just shoved off to start with instead of reverting me repeatedly because of some stupid personal problem or something. But that didn’t happen. So here we are. Going by the lack of response here and everywhere else though this is essentially a none issue and most of the pages should have just been deleted originally, but its still worth having guidelines despite that, just to keep them from doing this type of thing again if nothing else (and there’s no other good reason I can think of).
Not that it is the consensus of 2.5 people, but so what if it was? plenty of more important decisions having to do with OSM are made by less consensus. At least in this case we did our due diligence to allow people to provide feedback. Which is more then usually happens. If those people decided not to provide feedback though, that’s on them. We aren’t going to say screw the whole thing because other people decided to stay silent about it though.
Are you talking about the guideline proposal or when it comes to certain pages being deleted? If its about the guideline proposal its obviously still being worked on and discussed. As I said above, its on whoever doesn’t participate if they decide not to, not us. Things take time on here sometimes though. That’s life. The 2.5 people that are involved have provided pretty good feedback though that the proposal has been refined based on. So I’m not sure what your complaining about.
If your talking about deletion proposals, its clearly the consensus here that doing an RFC on the mailing list every time someone wants to request a page be deleted is unrealistic, a waste of the mailing lists time, and just not the right medium for it. There’s a good chance that people on the mailing list will just agree with whatever and not actually go over the page. Which is completely understandable. There’s no reason their time should be wasted reviewing a blank page or “bad” page every time someone does a deletion request. Plus, the person doing the deletion request shouldn’t have to manage a discussion about it in multiple mediums. Its hard enough with one. Also, know one really cared or contributed to the discussion when it was brought up in the mailing list. There’s no reason it would be any different, because ultimately this is a completely manufactured none issue, created by a few people that don’t really care about it in the first place.
Either way though, things within the wiki should be dealt with within the wiki. If things can’t be resolved there, then that’s on the wiki and its lack of a good civil community. In cases where consensus or a compromise can’t be reached, the pages should just be deleted in my opinion. In cases where its just a blank or “bad” page getting the deletion request though, which is 99% of the time, I don’t think consensus or a discussion should be used in the first place and the pages should just be deleted. Which I think the 2.5 people here all agree on. So it probably won’t be an issue most of the time anyway.
Its important to remember that not only are we discussing an extremely small percent of proposals out there, the ones out of the deletion requests that might qualify for or merit a dispute conversation is even more tiny. Unless people disregard things by reverting everything, including blank pages. Then they should just be reported to an admin. Before this gets finalized though we should be clear on what deletions requests should be contestable and which shouldn’t.