Talk:Policy and community health

Good work

Good stuff, Random. I have been worried that any policy changes arrived it in Strategy would just end up with every Wikipedian shouting "oh! So you went to your own little wiki and changed policy with a majority of five to zero... and there were only five of you voting? Sorry, pal, that's not the way we work around here..."

Also, we on Strat only seem to be aware of policy on en:wp... so any value policy changes would have as "A Strategy" might be moot, undesirable or pointless on other projects, so it's too specific an en:wp issue/approach for me.

Great drafting on the page. --Bodnotbod 20:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks! I definitely used your work on the other two as an inspiration. There's been some good data out there, so I really just had to link to it and summarize it. Randomran 20:29, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
• I didn't think that we were mandated to rewrite policy but to evaluate whether the process for developing and evaluating polices is working well. And if it was broken to make recommendations about ways that policy decision making can be improved. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:47, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Some questions, like "which policies can be eliminated" (Question #6), put us in a very uncomfortable position. I don't think there is a single policy we could eliminate that wouldn't cause a huge uproar and controversy. I've taken a look at different proposals for policy changes on this strategy wiki, and they all contradict each other. So I agree with you that we shouldn't rewrite policy... but I think there are a lot of other people wish that we would.
  • I think the community *has* been working on these issues for some time now. Simplifying policies, removing bad policies, adding good ones. But all of those steps can be filibustered, which leaves us with the default: status quo. I've seen policies that reflect actual practice hijacked and blocked by fringe groups. I've seen other fringe groups prevent bad policies from being so much as rewritten, when half the community is ready to remove it completely. I've seen people push to simplify and consolidate policies, but it often becomes a backdoor way to rewrite policy. It's really going to come down to improving our decision making processes, because right now the consensus process is systematically biased against change. Which means we've designed the community to favor stagnation, even in the face of difficult problems. Randomran 18:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Written policy versus community behavioral norms

• It has long been the ethos of wiki projects that written policy flows from community practices rather than the wording added to a policy by a select group of users. But over the last few years, more and more policy was written down and once written there was not way good method to review and update it. Policy conflicts like content conflicts stall because their is not a good method to resolve them that sticks. I think that addressing decision making in a broad way will address problems with reaching consensus with both policy and content. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:47, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Fascinating point, FloNight. ~Philippe 21:52, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Very well said. A lot of arrows are pointing towards improving our decision-making processes. Randomran 18:33, 20 December 2009 (UTC)