142.177.103.239: fairly exact definition

2003-12-21T22:13:43Z

fairly exact definition

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A '''factionally-defined term''' is a [[contested term]] which is important to some [[faction]]'s self-identity or internal processes. That is, to feel like they are coherent and understood, they must control this term and its meaning in presentations they make, or participate in. A [[trade union]] for instance often justifies its existence and builds its [[social capital]] on terms like "[[fair]]" - the union exists to promote fairness, and someone else's idea of fairness is unacceptable to the union - one must negotiate its meaning with them, and cannot impose it by majority vote or management fiat or anything else.

A [[factionally defined]] process usually involves one or more such terms. If there is too much [[factionalism]] in the [[glossary]], we cease to understand what each other are talking about. If there is not enough, some clique takes control of the [[Consumerium buying signal]] and gets to define what its words mean. This is quite dangerous if that clique does not share "our" [[value system]] - where "our" is defined as those of the users who want to do this [[moral purchasing]] we talk about, and ''not'' just those of contributors to the [[R&D wiki]].

Failure to recognize ''any'' factionally-defined terms will lead to factoring and reverting wars similar in type and scale to the [[Wikipedia troll wars]] - they have invited this by starting a project with such a huge scope, and having an ideology that trusts technology and informal group organization way too much, far more than any coherent theory of political science says to trust it... if we repeat these mistakes we will fail. Our [[Wiki Management]] should consider using other [[wiki code]] to avoid the mistakes embedded in that code.

Factionally-defined term - Revision history

142.177.103.239: fairly exact definition