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, but they can certainly adopt it.

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)

That comment
In other cases, a small minority might manage to get a particular change implemented for the simple reason that most people do not take notice of it and therefore do not decide to oppose it. The majority may then, eventually, be surprised by a change that nobody really wanted. ...

...should not be seen as a particular drawback of consensus making process. It is related to poor information, not to this specific process. A vote which is not advertised, or with a very short voting time, can lead to making a decision which was not desired by the majority just as well.
This issue can be solved by making clear what discussions are currently under way, and when they seem to be coming to a final consensual decision.
This comment is "not" a valid argument against consensus ahma.

I have modified the wording slightly, but I will have to think about that in more detail. --Eloquence

Sure. But, then

The majority may then, eventually, be surprised by a change that nobody really wanted. is no more valid, since the point is that people did not care rather than take notice. The fact they don't care to give their arguments does not imply they will be surprised by the change.

Why in the world is this on the English Wikipedia and not Meta when this grew from a post from the general policy mailing list? Wouldn't such a process be used by the entire project or just en.wiki? --mav 21:09 Nov 15, 2002 (UTC)