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)

Slow down, cowboy. The "general policy mailing list" was still the English Wikipedia mailing list 2 days ago and is probably still perceived by many of its subscribers as such. The reason I put this here is that I suggested to Jimbo that we work on ideas, and that he should eventually declare, as benevolent dictator, which decision making process we want to use. It is my understanding that he agreed to this proposal, he said he would also add his own arguments to the page.

The problem is that I do not know whether he wants to declare a binding process for all Wikipedias (and whether their respective maintainers would want that to happen), or just for the English one. For the time being, I consider this a project that is the result of the chaos on the English Wikipedia list in the last weeks, and unless Jimbo says otherwise, consider the results of our discussion primarily relevant to the EW, with adoption of our conclusions by the other Wikipedias being an option. --Eloquence 22:50 Nov 15, 2002 (UTC)

Perhaps polls on binding policy issues should be left open indefinately and people allowed to change their registered vote. This would allow newcomers an immediate voice while also providing long term flexibility to allow the community to drift appropriately with the prevailing weather.

The results of these polls should be summarized concisely and presented to newcomers and users as per Mav's and Axel's suggestions regarding the edit submittal form. Both a concise form and the long form could be required to initiate the poll so people know exactly what they are voting for and how it will be presented to the community and public at large.mirwin

I'm in favour of democracy with a meritocratic flavour. Voting power of a person could be weighed. A contributor who added/enhanced lots of articles and hopefully doing so has gained some wisdom about do's and dont's could have a larger say in matters of policy. Of course number of edits does not per se imply high standards and quality, but in most cases there will be a correlation, since most wikipedians whose work is not appreciated will improve their conduct or leave. So on average veterans will have a more balanced/mature view of what if good conduct and what is not. At the bare minimun I think that only registered users should be allowed to vote. This normal practice all over the web, and in society as a whole. If registering is too much trouble, tough luck. Erik Zachte 03:01 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

I agree with the "only registered users" part, everything else would be far too easy to abuse. You have to realize something, though: While most of us may like voting, Jimbo doesn't. So we should try to find arguments against the alternatives, and to refute the arguments against voting that can be made, otherwise we may be stuck with the "decision by consensus" process for years to come. --Eloquence 03:27 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

What types of decisions would this be for? I think that dramatically affects what type of process we should use. We've pretty much already decided the process for deciding what's in most articles--the process we call wiki. For decisions about formatting pages, et cetera, we use straw polls on policy pages to create guidelines which can be ignored in favor of common sense and any attempt to have strict votes and strict enforcement would ruin the wiki(pedia) way. But for other decisions, like banning users, we need some other way. But why only one method for all types of decisions? Banning a user is different from deciding whether September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Memorials belongs in the : namespace and I don't see why both of those should have the same process.DanKeshet