Charter/Sources/Right-of-way

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This text was excerpted from Ignore all rules

Rules of the Chinese road[edit]

Anyone who has lived long in China and also in another country, such as US or Germany, has noticed some striking contrasts. Chinese traffic law is not that much different from American -- drive on the right side, stop for red lights, and so forth. Chinese traffic signs generally conform to the international standard. But the customs of Chinese drivers and others who share the road are very different.

A common conveyance is a three-wheeled motorcycle taxicab, about the size of deep freezer, with just enough room for two skinny-hipped passengers to sit behind the driver. They resemble Bangkok's tuk-tuks and so I call them, since Chinese themselves do not seem to be able to agree on a name.

Long accustomed to hard bargaining with tuk-tuk drivers and wild rides through packs of bicyclists, I still found room one day for some amazement when my driver accelerated on approach to a red traffic signal at a skewed intersection. The angle of the cross street meant that two acute corners were totally blind to drivers on either side; fortunately, perhaps, the cross street was one-way.

My driver gunned the motor right up to the moment we actually entered the intersection. The light was still red; heavy cross traffic was passing with the light; and meanwhile, an oncoming dusty black Stalinesque sedan was also violating his red light, bulling his way into the throng. We not only cut off bikes, motorbikes, peditrucks, pedestrians, and a bus all moving with the light; we made a left turn into the cross street, cutting off Uncle Joe.

Note that with three wheels, tuk-tuks do not corner like bikes; there is no leaning into the turn. I cannot say whether my American fast-food bred fat acted as ballast, but in any case, we merely slid, and did not roll. Straightened out again, my driver fully opened the throttle and we zoomed down the one-way cross street at about 70 Kph (45 Mph) -- the wrong way.

Not only did all the oncoming traffic move aside as we passed, but not a hand was raised, not a toot was heard; I did not even see anyone make eye contact. My driver ignored not only the law of man, not only the signage and local custom, not only the laws of physics; but, head high, ignored the very presence of any other soul on the street. And everyone else ignored us, too. I arrived at my destination cold sober (and I do not drink).

Chinese drivers simply do not have a concept of Right of Way. You may drive however you please; and by the same token, you must permit anyone else to do as he pleases.

Contrast a very late night in the city of Chicago, America, near the downtown Ohio-Ontario feeder to the Kennedy Expressway. The streets in that area are one-way and very wide -- I don't know, 5, 6, maybe 7 lanes wide; wider at 3 am, since nobody is parked at either curb. A fool (I assume), or merely some disoriented soul, makes an unwise turn and begins driving down Dearborn, the wrong way, in what would be the far right lane if traffic was permitted in that direction.

The street is so wide here, it is almost wider from side to side than the block from Ohio to Ontario is long; it is designed for Crush Hour traffic, a million office drones fighting for the relative safety of the suburbs before the lights go out in the City. There is next to no traffic now; most of the drunks are long gone.

Yet I see the only other driver on the street flick his headlights and swerve across 3 lanes to position himself directly in front of the malfeasant; the two of them brake with front bumpers a kiss apart, furiously honking, screaming obscenities at one another. I pass on; I cannot tell you now if firearms were drawn.

At first, it seems that the Chinese are smarter. They've been living in crowded cities for a long time, and they've learned that the best way to deal with slight offense is to ignore it. Americans, it seems, are arrogant fools -- creating problems where there are none, bickering over a point that will not make sense even to themselves in the morning.

But this does not take into account the accelerating effects of technology. Despite all the good will (or studied indifference) in the world, the tuk-tuk man and I might well never have arrived, and you would be spared this tale. When machines hurtle past one another at speed, there is simply not enough time for all parties to gradually, with no particular method, edge out of each other's way. Pedestrians completely ignore jostles from other pedestrians, and a shopping basket in the kidneys is not remarked upon. But even slight contact between two moving motor vehicles means a trip to the repair shop, and it takes little to render machines and their drivers permanently inoperable.

China's rate of traffic fatalities, per car, is 8 times that of US. [1] As charming as the first picture is, and as ugly the second, the sad truth is that "just getting along" does not work -- not with modern technology on the street.

The reason American traffic fatalities are so much lower, despite road rage, cheap guns, and disrespect for one another and the law, is that Americans are very clear on the concept of Right of Way. It has little to do with vigorous law enforcement, although that is a factor. The main control on an American driver is the concerted attitude of every other driver, any one of whom may defend his Right of Way to the death. This customary Right of Way may be traced to written ordinance, honored in the breach as it is. It keeps everyone moving in roughly the same direction. When there is a dispute, say, at an intersection, even a malefactor is generally aware that he is running through a Stop sign; if push comes to shove, everyone may assume that he will probably back down.

In China, nobody ever backs down; not on the street. They avoid confrontation as much as possible, but when it is inevitable, there is no way to decide the matter, with or without loss of face, in the short time it takes to crash. I have watched Chinese truck drivers spend 20 minutes rubbing past one another in a narrow alley, leaving streaks of paint on the brickwork on both sides, rather than admit that one must back out and wait for the other. Cyclists crushed by buses are commonplace.

  • This policy is a noble ideal, and may have been workable at one time, when WP was a smaller community; even now, it may give good advice to a timid newcomer if understood to be severely limited in scope. But now it is a ticking time bomb waiting to be used as a defense in every silly matter. It must be retired -- with honor, but retired. — Xiong-talk 01:32, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)
I am speechless in awe. Wikipedia:Brilliant prose, Xiong. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 01:56, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Excellent essay — I'm not sure if I agree with your conclusion (that Wikipedia needs rules to ensure continued growth and preservation of article quality) but I will admit that rules are a critical mechanism for ensuring uniformity and preventing needless conflict. Deco 02:19, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
wonderful text, but I disagree. As Wikipedia and its policies grow and grow, this rule becomes essential as never before. I gave the german page a rewrite a while ago (de:Wikipedia:Ignoriere_alle_Regeln), it lacks the beautiful conciseness of the english version but states IMO more clearly what this rule is about: Wikipedia is a project to create collaboratevily an encyclopedia. Rules are just a mean to this end. As a newbie (and even as an old hand) you can't know all the rules which developped here over time, so just use your best judgement and do what you deem reasonable in order to achieve this goal. --Elian 02:25, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Something that might help with the impossibility of knowing all rules is to reduce the number of rules. Then there would be fewer rules for people to ignore, and fewer problems with people ignoring said rules (cf. instruction creep). Elian's rules from the German page are a good set; m:Foundation issues is another. For an actual proposal to have rule cuts (hey, tax cuts are always popular, right?), see Wikipedia:Wikirules proposal. While I'm skeptical that the mechanism proposed there is the right one, I understand the feeling behind it. --Michael Snow 06:04, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Concur with Elian and Michael. And Xiong, that was a wonderful essay; so much so that I hate to disagree with it. But Wikipedia is not a road. No one will get killed if someone doesn't know about yield signs and no passing zones, nor even if they haven't the faintest idea about traffic lights. You can still get where you're going, though if you appear to be terribly clueless some kind soul should (and will, probably, from what I've seen) come by to help you out so you don't keep crashing into oncoming traffic and spoiling everyone else's travels. I'd imagine even in China—though I've never been and know little about it—that those who deliberately disrupt traffic are not tolerated for long. Blatant abusers who will brandish "Ignore All Rules" as justification for their actions can be dealt with, because we as Wikipedians largely have the common sense to distinguish between good faith and bad.
The American response to the traffic incident is far worse. It values strict adherence to policy over basic civility, and an ugly one-upmanship on the part of the would-be cop over someone who was at the time hurting no one. Would-be Wikicops insisting on process over product already exhibit some of that same behavior, with the same effect: both parties' tempers flare and nothing productive is accomplished. On the road it is excusable: it's difficult to swing by later and talk to the traffic offender to say "hey, please don't do that, someone might get killed", and one cannot see whether it is someone with a history of disrupting traffic or someone who is just a little lost in an unfamiliar town. Here, it is a simple task. Just my pedestrian opinion, Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:27, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
(As a side note, Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset has also been proposed, as an alternative to the above-linked Wikirules proposal.) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:27, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quick answer about real situation, not analogy: Chinese drivers tolerate everything, up to and including determined efforts by other drivers to run them off the road. You cannot imagine, until you have seen it, the Chinese capacity to absorb insult without return. Note that once a certain point is passed, reprisal is swift and deadly; but that point is far beyond Western credibility. I got on the plane shouting, "You can't let Them walk all over you like that!" — Xiong-talk 18:52, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Right of Way explained[edit]

Very briefly: I tried to tell a story without introducing my own biases, so now others impute them to me, willy-nilly. I failed to draw what I thought were obvious conclusions. I am compelled to speak.

query-road.png

1. The American system of arbitrating Right-of-Way disputes does not work especially well.

A deranged teen Jolt junkie could program, in a week, a box that would control every automobile on the road, and the rate of crashes and fatalities overall be less than today. It's a relatively simple problem of physics and motion control; the only hairy part is predicting the presence of uncontrolled objects in the roadway. (Note I said "predicting", not "detecting". If the object is already there, it's not so hard to spot. Objects not in the vehicle's path, which may cross it in near future, are much more difficult.)

2. The Chinese system of arbitrating disputes worked very well for thousands of years, during which it was endlessly refined.

My mother, who traveled to China long before I, told and retold a shaggy dog story of her own, which spoke of an intercity bus barreling down a narrow dirt road between two rice paddies. She spotted another bus zooming toward an inevitable head-on collision; there was simply no shoulder at all, no room on the single dirt track for even two manure carts to pass one another. She squeezed her eyes shut and, being simultaneously an atheist and an Orthodox Jewess, prayed mightily to a god in whom she had no faith. Hearing no crash and feeling no jerk from this world into the next, she looked out the rear window to see the other bus rapidly disappearing in a cloud of dust. Chinese really do know how to avoid contention.

3. The Chinese system now fails miserably only within the modern, speeded-up environment of the congested city street, full of mixed vehicles and pedestrians, some of which are highly maneuverable automobiles, trucks, buses, and motorbikes. Available reaction time is cut to about 10% of what is available when pedestrians throng along motorless streets; and consequences escalate as the square of velocity of collision -- roughly 10,000% as dangerous for collisions at 10 times the speed of a walking man, and that's neglecting the increased mass of the colliding vehicles.

4. The relative success of the American system is not evident during the occasional pissing contests, which merely serve to underpin the concept of more or less absolute Right of Way. It is evident in the innumerable small conflicts which are passed over with hardly a thought, in which one party yields to the other, both parties secure in the knowledge that, given the relative situation, they are each confident of who has the Right of Way; the dominant party accelerates, the submissive party yields, and all is well.

The pissing contests are the price we pay to enforce the concept of Right of Way. They are true cases of honoring a standard in the breach. In the worst case, when a raging motorist tracks another down ten miles of freeway, draws a firearm, and gets on teevee, every single American who sees the evening nooz has the same thought: "One of those guys had the Right of Way, and the other guy stole it." Yes, all the viewers also have the same, rational, criticism: "I don't really care which guy was Right and they were both stoopid." But nobody watching thinks the shooting was about anything except who cut who off -- and to have that thought, one must implicitly accept the idea that one driver can cut another off, and that means to steal the Right of Way. The concept is upheld.

5. Right of Way is a formal rule of the road, a written law of man; but it is also a law of physics: whatever is in a spot first has the Right of Way, since no two bodies can occupy the same volume. It is also a social custom, and most drivers have never even glanced at the book they got from the DMV since they cribbed their written test. "Who has the Right of Way in this or that situation" is a lesson learned again and again, over the course of years behind the wheel, taught by one driver to another, and the one-finger salute is not really an insult, but teacher's red pen. Some drivers also require the heavier black marker of the bill from the body shop to underline specific instances of customary Right of Way, and John Law gets his licks in, too -- but the vast control of drivers' day-to-day actions is the vigilance of other drivers: peer pressure.

That said, it still doesn't work very well. Drivers are essentially all Anonymous Cowards -- flashy as they may be, as distinctive as their cars may seem, they enter each new conflict as anonymous as an egg. Positive peer pressure only goes so far; it is the naked threat of being rammed that negatively pressures drivers to conform.

6. The Wikipedian is like the Chinese driver, but with American blood.

He began, when WP was small and he knew everybody, and everybody knew him; by yielding gracefully, and indirectly, to others, with no thought for "who is Right". On receiving a minor insult, he just ignored it. Most times, even two parties with adverse intent simply went ahead as directly as possible, doing nothing obvious to avoid collision, but not provoking it, either. This worked very well.
Time went by, and the road became more congested. It is a feature of cyberspace, especially wikispace, that all users are almost everywhere almost all the time. There is no such thing as a quiet corner; every street is a main drag, with packs of moto-vandals roaring along, herds of nitro-fueled trolls shooting up passers-by, and stealthy orcs deliberately altering the signage and standing on busy corners (mis)directing traffic. Not only do some of these troublemakers deliberately flaunt the unwritten, unspoken convention to avoid trouble and escalation of trouble; there are also waves of immigrants who simply know nothing, too numerous to educate individually, or even to watch closely enough to identify and distinguish from the rest -- not to mention the tourists who stop to make a random edit or three.
Wikipedians are overwhelmingly white male American college dropout ex-computer pros, and we reacted in typical white male American college dropout ex-computer pro fashion -- by forgetting all the Cliff-Notes Asian philosophy (though continuing to shout it in most-un-Asian fashion); by running to the thumb-sucking security of resort to authority; by building castles of ever-more elaborate rules, regulations, procedures, tribunals, sanctions, rules, more rules, rules of order, points of procedure, policies, guidelines, more rules, jockeying for high ground, Orwellian sanitizing of history, doublethink (of course), groupthink, clerkthink, and naive pleas for peace, love, and good vibes; by descending to the level of the trolls and orcs, eventually joining their ranks; and finally all join in a hundred choruses of "Four legs good; two legs better!"
It's a good thing we aren't all white male American college dropout ex-computer pros; I suspect the 3 or 4 female Mexican high-school grad preschool teachers here are holding the entire project together by the skin of their teeth and when they finally get tired and go home to their friends and families, Devil Gates will come with his team of Men in Black (but no ties), kill it, cook it, freeze it, and laugh all the way to the bank. After the implosion, a hard core remains to sue Gates for his violation of GFDL. Guess what? He has more lawyers than you do.

7. The best outcome if we continue on this road is that real growth will slow; the membership will level off as the PO'd leave as fast as newbies come in; existing members will spend more and more time in factional conflict and endless refinement of procedural points and puffy debate (like this bit). There will be no new articles on Real topics, because (1) everyone is already busy attacking, defending, or congratulating each other on not fighting; (2) everyone is afraid to make edits that might invite a reprisal, but for the trolls begging for one; (3) everyone has exhausted his own personal stock of expertise anyway, and the hostile climate excludes serious new members -- although the door is still wide open to the Visigoths.

Fortunately, there will still be some numerical growth to point at, as hundreds of magical-weapon-foo-in-this-fantasy-universe pages will be copied in from user mans, and sooner or later, Somebody will propose that all Talk pages be added to article mainspace.

If there are any doubters here, I propose a simple metric. We are all proud of the number of mainspace articles, but let us compare number of edits to articles with number of edits to all other namespaces -- none of which do the Reader any direct good. Graph this ratio over time. I don't have the tools to do this, especially not stretching back to the beginning of the project -- but I guarantee Somebody does.

8. -- which is Chinese Good Luck -- All is not lost and the project is not doomed. I took one thing away from China, if nothing else: the amazing way in which they are able to stubbornly resist all change in an area, right up to the point where they change everything all at once.

We just need to dump all the rules, all the nasty little procedures, all the crutches for little minds, and return to a simple philosophy of common sense, basic intellectual honesty, and good faith efforts to accommodate one another and reach consensus, not simple majority, on matters which perplex us.
Of course, we also must return the size of the community to a point where once again, everybody knows everybody, and implicit reputation management serves well. And we must do that without imposing new, Draconian rules which exclude new members or chase existing ones away.
Finally, we must agree on a Wikipedia:Charter -- a simple document that anyone can grasp, with the absolute plainest statement of basic principles, and which is not subject to debate or revision under any conditions short of a Constitutional Convention.
Impossible? Well, of course. But then, what isn't? — Xiong-talk 18:52, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Charter? that's not too difficult:

of course, the devil is in the details ;-) --Elian 02:13, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For some strange reason, I'm working on something close to what you're looking for here: Wikipedia:Simplified_Ruleset. Please come over and help out! Kim Bruning 12:47, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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