Wikipedia:Advisory Council on Project Development

The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.

The Advisory Council on Project Development is a group of Wikipedians that was formed at the invitation of the Arbitration Committee, with the endorsement of Jimbo Wales. Invitations were sent by Kirill Lokshin to an unknown number of people inviting them to become members. The criteria for selection has not been made public.

The announcement was met by immediate disapproval by some community members and a request for comment was created. Disaproval seems to focus on the ArbCom having created what is perceived to be a far-reaching Advisory Council without community-wide input, and that the membership of the council ought to be elected.[1] Those supporting the creation of the council counter that since it is just an advisory think-tank, it will not have any powers and that it is not unusual for organizations to create advisory committees without elections.[2]

Council members have begun conversations here, and the issues being discussed are also being summarized and organized on this page.

Community members have started alternative forums for discussing community issues including:

Proposal:

User:Sam/Facilitated community discussions

Mission and Vision

proposed:

"The group has neither executive authority nor special status nor any powers. Its remit lies exclusively in the realm of ideas: to chuck them about, to chew them, to digest them, to improve them, to develop them. Its focus will be providing considered or imaginative solutions to longstanding problems."

Name change?

Organization

There appears to be a strong consensus among members of the council that all of its activities should be transparent and on-wiki. Conversations have barely started on how it should be organized.

Process

No process has been agreed upon as yet. It has been proposed that this page be used to facilitate the process, but this is an experiment that has just begun.

Suggested functions

Facilitate consensus - collect, summarize, refactor, edit and redact previous community and council discussions.
Request and direct data analysis - Establish links with those capable of providing statistical data to enable decision making based on empirical data.

Possible next steps

Discuss and agree on the process we will use to run this council
Create individual pages for each proposed agenda item which include an analysis and history of the issue.
Decide first issue to focus on

Membership

Membership is currently by invitation of the Arbitration Committee.

There seems to be broad consensus that if this is to be an ongoing organization there should be a mechanism for getting community input and approval of its members. There also seems to be consensus of the current members that since they have no official powers there is nothing lost by having conversations and trying to come up some solutions to ongoing problems. Creating a mechanism for membership seems to be less pressing than demonstrating that the council can be of some value.

This is a highly controversial and very knotty problem. If the membership is vetted, accusations will fly of a self-elected group or a cabal. If the membership is elected, it will elevate the group's status to an elite. If membership is wide open, it may grow too large, or too prone to disruption, to achieve anything particularly helpful.

Agenda

It is understood that The Arbitration Committee will probably be providing a list of suggested topics for discussion. There seems to be consensus that the council can and should create their own list as well. The larger community has also been asked to contribute topics here. Issues that have been brought up so far include (in no particular order):

Cleaning up BLP The project doesn't have the resources to monitor or maintain all of the biographies of living people.
Drafting a mission statement
Policies Arguing over vague policies. Editors trying to alter policies to give them an advantage in content disputes. Editors controlling policy pages to keep "their" version intact, while ignoring discussions or consensus. Policy changes by persistent small groups.
Addition and retention of users
Community decision making
Governance issues Term lengths, holding other positions, retention of privileges after resignation or end of terms, public perception, impeachment mechanisms.
Problematic pages [3]
Organization of this council [4][5]

Long term agenda

Opening up membership of this council (broad consensus)[6]

Decisions

This council is committed to open discussions to be held on wikipedia. [7]

Initial members

The Advisory Council is currently comprised of the following editors (and their signatures):

Awadewit — Awadewit (talk)
BirgitteSB — BirgitteSB
Casliber — Casliber (talk · contribs)
Cla68 — Cla68 (talk)
David Fuchs — Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk)
DGG — DGG (talk)
Drini — m:drini
Dweller — Dweller (talk)

Discussions

Advisory Council talk page (for general comments and inquiries about the Advisory Council)
Advisory Council forum (for discussion among Advisory Council members)
Advisory Council forum talk page (for outside comments about topics being discussed by the Advisory Council)

Reference

For reference, essays, stats etc.