Consensus products: guidelines, directives, and article layout-pages

I like everything you're saying. I always tend to focus on "how could this go wrong", and to me it could go wrong if we get into instruction creep, and do directives on stuff like "naming convention for Barack Obama versus Barack Hussein Obama versus Barry Obama". But I think that's easy to resolve if we just establish a threshold where a directive is more appropriate than a localized or small decision.

I might also prefer the term "social contract". "Directive" sounds like it's coming from the top down, and it isn't (nor should it). It should represent something that a bunch of diligent, good faith editors arrived at after some discussion, and agreed between them was a fair way to handle a contentious issue.

But yes, I think you're onto a fantastic idea. Yeah, let's deal with contentious subject areas by having editors discuss layouts and conventions. And, where necessary, provide legal input (I'm thinking of libel for BLP debates). We just need to offer some guidance about how to use it for good, not evil.