User:Millelacs/Policy Proposals

= A Proposal Regarding WikiProject History =

A Proposal
Below are some ideas on restructuring and revitalizing WikiProject History. You may have been notified of this already, as I have left messages on the talk pages of related projects and of editors who may be interested in this idea.  DCI  talk 01:08, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

General Points

 * Restructure the front page so that it more closely resembles that of WikiProject Military History. This design is easy to navigate, and getting to specific areas of the WikiProject is made quicker and less difficult.


 * Forge closer ties with some of its "daughter" projects. WikiProject History should serve as a focal point for history-related article improvement drives and discussions, and should be a community of editors supportive of smaller, fairly inactive region-specific history projects.


 * Expand the A-Class review process. This should be a major function of WikiProject History (conducting A-Class reviews for smaller, "daughter" projects).
 * A-Class reviews can be closed only by the Assessment and Review Coordinator or one of his/her delegates. The coordinator/delegate must follow reviewer consensus when determining whether or not to close a review.  Any member of any History WikiProject is eligible to be a reviewer.
 * The Assessment and Review Departments should work on developing articles to GA and FA status.


 * Host task forces devoted to improving recently-created articles. Some editors should work with WikiProject Deletion Sorting to save as many quality history-related AfDs as reasonably possible.  WikiProject History shall create a fairly inclusive New Article Task Force, the members of which will devote part of their time on Wikipedia to improving and expanding new articles.  The Contest Department of the website (see below) should institute a "DYK Contest" for members of this task force.


 * WikiProject History should be less of a "front-line" WikiProject, unlike the Military History WikiProject in this regard, and more of a coordinating effort. An enhanced A-Class review process and forging relations with "daughter" projects would help to achieve this goal.

Membership and Leadership

 * All current WikiProject History members would be members of the new, revitalized project. WikiProject Military History members, as well as members of all region-specific history projects, would be automatically inducted into the project, although these users could opt out at any time.


 * All members of the WikiProject should have an equal say in WikiProject affairs.
 * However, a group of five coordinators should be elected by all editors that are part of the abovementioned categories to make the WikiProject "flow" smoothly. These coordinators must have been members of the WikiProject or an affiliate for at least six months.  They would serve for twelve months each, and would be elected in February of each year.  The candidate with the highest percentage of the vote will be appointed chief coordinator, and will appoint the other four coordinators to head the departments that'll be listed below.
 * Each coordinator would have a specific task, or "department".
 * Chief Coordinator. This coordinator would serve as a guide to other coordinators and members of the project.
 * The chief coordinator would have authority to appoint members to Project Review Panels, which would assess the functionality of different parts and "daughter projects" of WikiProject History.
 * Assessment and Review Coordinator. This coordinator would sort and (close A-class) reviews, with the help of two delegates that s/he could appoint.  He or she would coordinate the Assessment Department and the Review Department.  The A+R Coordinator would work with Project Review Panels to improve the quality of articles coming within the project's scope.
 * Membership Coordinator. This coordinator would deal with membership issues, and would direct and judge "contests" on the project.  He or she would coordinate the Contest Department.
 * Resources and Assistance Coordinator. This coordinator would assist members in need.  He or she would coordinate the Resources Department, and would provide assistance to members who need guidance or support with articles.  This is in contrast to the Membership Coordinator, who would deal with issues and run contests.
 * Content Coordinator. This coordinator would work on improving articles in need, and would direct efforts and drives related to this.  This person would coordinate the Content Matters Department.

Coordinators should defer to member consensus when encountering major issues or when making important decisions while carrying out the duties of coordination.

Front Page
As I am no expert at page designing, I will list some ideas I have on how a front page ought to look, at least from my perspective:


 * The front page should feature an A-class article weekly, changing with Wikipedia's featured article on Saturdays/Sundays.
 * The front page should be topped by tabs leading to each Department. Some departments, including the Assessment, Review, and Content Departments, along with some news bits, etc. that deserve a piece of the page, should be given "boxes" that fill the page.
 * Membership information should be provided down a ways on the page, along with a list of members where one can sign up as a project member.
 * Collaboration between "daughter" projects should be stressed on this front page.

Role on the Encyclopedia
The three pillars of this project should be: WikiProject History should be active, helping to coordinate its "daughter" projects on a daily basis and conducting A-class reviews at a reasonable speed. It should be constantly working to increase knowledge by improving articles and assessing them appropriately. It should be an integral part of the encyclopedia, and an example of editor collaboration on improving the coverage of a subject area they are interested in. Let's make WikiProject History a part of Wikipedia's future.
 * Activity.
 * Coordination.
 * Increasing Knowledge.

Thank you for reading this, and for commenting, if you are interested.  DCI  talk 23:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

= Editorial Collaboration Council =

To increase collaboration between various areas of Wikipedia and to facilitate discussions on the state of the encyclopedia, an Editorial Collaboration Council should be established.

Structure
The Council would be composed of 20 councilors, two from each of the following sectors on Wikipedia.


 * Articles for deletion
 * Content disputes
 * Inter-user disputes
 * Anti-vandalism tasks
 * Multilingual coordination
 * Technical areas
 * Societal encyclopedic content
 * Mathematical and scientific encyclopedic content
 * Popular culture encyclopedic content
 * Religious and philosophical encyclopedic content.

Selection
Ten noticeboards would be created, one for each of these sectors. A candidate for councilor would nominate himself or herself on the page. To keep nominations at a minimum, the nomination period should be well-advertised but very short. In the end, a series of mathematical operations similar to that used to calculate winners of an Arbitration Committee Election could be used to select two councilors from each sector.


 * No councilor may hold two or more seats on the council.
 * Councilors will serve for 18 months. They may run for reelection once.

Criteria
A candidate for councilor must:


 * Have been a user for at least one year.
 * Be in good standing with the community.
 * Not be blocked or banned at the time of nomination or within six months of the nomination period.
 * Have made significant edits to at least 5 articles falling within the scope of the noticeboard where the nomination is listed.
 * Nominations, such as AfD listings, may be substituted for articles. This list of 5 contributions must be posted below the nominee's candidacy disclaimer on the noticeboard.

What the Council would do
The council would meet once every two months, preferably over a two-day weekend stretch, enabling councilors from around the globe to contribute to the sessions. The following subjects would be among those discussed during council sessions:


 * Current trends noticed in the Wikipedia community.
 * How to deal or cope with negative trends in a resourceful, effective way.
 * How to extrapolate on positive trends in a way that would attract community attention.
 * Common problems in the Wikipedia community.
 * How to resolve these problems in resourceful and effective ways.
 * How to discard problematic or useless parts of Wikipedia's structure.
 * How to revise parts of Wikipedia's structure that are not resolving problems efficiently.
 * How to make parts of Wikipedia more accessible.
 * How to increase collaboration between various parts of Wikipedia's community.
 * Setting up programs through which multiple community sectors could work together to achieve a common goal.
 * Setting up proactive efforts that would incorporate much of the community. These efforts would be directed at awareness of and prevention of problems discussed during the session.
 * Recent events.

Leadership and maintenance
The Council would elect a Chair and a Vice-Chair at each conference. These two editors would be responsible for moderating conferences and special meeting sessions, and would serve as the Council's representatives in other Wikipedia events or discussions. They would also be responsible for coordinating Council activities during the months between sessions. Chairs or vice-chairs would serve for the entire eighteen-month term.


 * The chair would select two Council clerks, who would help schedule meetings, coordinate them, and to provide assistance to anyone wondering about the Council or needing to participate in a session of it.
 * The vice-chair would select two Council clerks, who would perform the same job as the chair's clerks.
 * New clerks could be selected at the end of the eighteen-month term. No clerk can serve as a councilor at the same time.
 * The chair and vice-chair would select a five-user committee of English Wikipedia bureaucrats to help oversee polling and elections at the end of the eighteen-month term.

Thank you for reading this!
= Polling policy changes =

Reform
I'm afraid that this might get shot down as soon as I post it, but I'd like to say a few things about the role of polling and voting in our online community.

First, I'll make it clear that I strongly support the use of polling and voting on Wikipedia, and I believe that it is a useful way to establish a recognized consensus. Polling and voting may not be ideal substitutes for general consensus, but they are far more efficient and representative than certain ways currently in place on our community when it comes to selecting editors to serve as administrators, bureaucrats, and when determining the course we should take in the future.

There are often complaints about administrative overreaching or inappropriate behavior that flouts the guidelines we as a community expect of our highly-trusted delegates to these positions. An administrator is a person selected by fellow editors to perform highly important and occassionally sensitive maintenance tasks on the website. As such, the process of delegating editors to serve in this role can be rather tricky. Currently, administrators are appointed by bureaucrats, who take into consideration a quasi-election/discussion that hopes to establish consensus. However, a bureaucrat is not bound by the discussion; if the minority viewpoints are seen to be valid, the bureaucrat may support the editors falling into that category.

I believe that we must reform the administrative selection process to include a pure voting system, a smaller-scaled version of our Wikimedia Steward Elections that could take place in lieu of an RfA for a given candidate. This, I believe, would be a more efficient way of selecting these highly-trusted delegates because an editor supported by a great deal of the community, despite valid opposition, is more representative and likely to be trusted by larger amounts of editors. Some will say that voters might not be of an appropriate caliber to choose administrators, and they might be inclined to say that editors who oppose RfA candidates because of their lack of experience in certain fields are correct in their views. Sometimes, the current system shoots down editors who could be outstanding administrators just because they haven't been active in certain battlegrounds of our website. On a website that devotes pages to information for "wannabe" administrators, it seems unnecessary to voice objections to candidacies because of the respective candidate's record in a particular area. Yes, an editor needs some experience to become an administrator, but I believe that editors voting in election-RfAs would be experienced enough themselves to select a qualified and worthy candidate. Let's not judge a high-quality vehicle by the tire-marks it makes.

Secondly, I think that polling when it comes to community decisions would be a good substitute for the often heated discussions that often arise about controversial issues and then get mired down in the muck of angry, misled vitriol. Take for example the once-never-abating proposals to rename our article on the Libyan Civil War. This led to high amounts of tension on that article's talk page, tension that is unhealthy in any encyclopedic community or in any community, for that matter. When it comes to debates like this, largely content-inspired, voting could show how the majority of community members feel on the subject, and then bureaucrats or trusted administrators thought of as representatives of the community could make a decision as to how this result compares with the depiction of the debated item in reputable sources.

Finally, voting would be a good substitute for some policy-making decisions. Policies should not be in place if a majority of editors involved in discussing the said policy do not agree on the status quo or the issue in question. A good argument should not be the basis for a policy, for a policy change, or for a proposal, no matter how our administrative and bureaucratic elements feel about those arguments. Instead, a majority of editors involved in discussing the topic should make the final call when it comes to determining policy on Wikipedia. Yes, this is an encyclopedia, and we don't want to get too far from our main goal, but no online effort like this can survive without an active and heard commmunity. We must rely on knowledgeable and diligent majorities, and not always eloquent minorities. dci &#124;  TALK   02:08, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that voter participation in RfA tends to be low and/or insular, so I'd be wary of making it a pure vote. "knowledgeable and diligent majorities, and not always eloquent minorities" — False dilemma. --Cyber cobra (talk) 19:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that my statement about "eloquent minorities" was probably distracting; what I really meant is that decision-making should be made by the majority or by the delegates of the majority of interested/active editors.  dci  &#124;  TALK   20:38, 23 February 2012 (UTC)