Wikipedia talk:Decision Making Process

okay, as much as I am personally convinced that a decision making process is necessary, I play the advocatus diaboli now (feel free to move stuff into the article)

first, this page belongs on Meta, not on the English wikipedia.
second, Wikipedia is not only a social system but also a technocracy, meaning that the developers constitute a part of the executive. A special solution has to be found for decisions which involve programming effort. What if the community decides upon something which none of the developers wants to program? Should we force them? How is enforcement done?
third, a veto right should be installed - and also an instance to refer to if a decision is taken which contradicts one of the essential rules of wikipedia in the opinion of some people.
fourth, a body of unalterable things (a wikipedia constitution ;-)) should be defined which cannot be changed by vote (NPOV for example)
fifth, polls should be announced at announce-l, otherwise they are not valid.

that's it, for the moment. --Elian

1) Our goal is to arrive at a final decision about the process, made by Jimbo. I'm not sure to which extent such a decision should/can be made for the non-English Wikipedias.

2) This is a minor issue -- if nobody wants to implement the system we agree on, we can always pool money to pay someone to do it.

3,4,5) These belong as proposals in the article.

3) Except for Jimbo and possibly other people at Bomis, who should be able to veto what and why?

4) If we use voting, the "body of unalterable things" can still be alterable, but simply with a significantly stronger majority. I don't think unalterable rules are ever a good idea.

5) I have no problem with posting polls to announce-l, but there should also be a "Recent polls" list on Wikipedia itself for those who don't want to subscribe to the list. --Eloquence 16:19 Nov 15, 2002 (UTC)