User:Talrias/Task forces proposal

This page is an overview of some brainstorming I and a few others have done on the concept of task forces for improving policy (a task force being a temporary organisation formed to work on a single defined task or activity). Task forces would be broadly responsible for an area of policy (for example, deletion, adminship, etc.), and would be tasked with coming up with improvements to an existing policy and creation of new policies. Please take "policy" to include both guidelines and policies.

General idea
Members of a task force would be appointed in some way (for example via elections), and would discuss amongst themselves the problems with the existing policy, how to improve it so it better serves building the encyclopaedia, and the removal of policies which do not help the development of Wikipedia. The various task forces would work the community to get feedback on all aspects of their work, including problems with existing policies, discussion of what works and what doesn't, and comments on their suggested proposals.

After a task force as a group were happy with their suggested modification of a policy, they would require consent from the community to implement it. This would probably be done via a simple straw poll, and due to the task force already having a mandate from the community to develop changes, would be typically lower than the usual "consensus" pass mark (e.g. a simple majority would be sufficient to implement the change).

I would suggest a task force for each area of Wikipedia policy, such as moving pages, each administrative tool (deletion, blocking, protection, rollback), manual of style, adminship, bureaucratship, recent changes, copyright, stubs, etc. Obviously, some task forces would have larger roles than others - some task forces, such as one for bureaucrat-related policy, simply may not be necessary due to the low numbers.

Use to Wikipedia
This would be useful for Wikipedia because of the increasing size of the community. Due to its size, people are excluded from topics they may be interested in discussing and debating but may not know are under discussion purely due to the amount of things which are under discussion. Unfortunately this means it is likely that good ideas are excluded. Forming a body tasked specifically with reform of an area, which actively solicits feedback from the community gives people a single place to discuss topics they are interested in. In a large group, decision making becomes difficult.

Inspiration
The general idea of this was inspired in part by select committees in legislative bodies. In the House of Commons, select committees are groups of MPs, from all political parties, each one dedicated to a different government department. Their role is to hold the government to account, solicit feedback from the general public, and to report to Parliament. While of course a direct comparison between Wikipedia and a legislative body is naturally flawed, the concept of a small body of people, interested and dedicated to a specific field, to help improve the system to improve its functioning is a good one and works well in practice.

Things to consider

 * How would task forces be created?
 * How would members of a task force be appointed?
 * Is a single "policy committee" a better idea than having multiple task forces?
 * How do we ensure that a task force is representative of opinion across Wikipedia/has community support?
 * How do we ensure that time spent dealing with policy does not affect contributors' time spent on encyclopaedic articles?

Talrias (t | e | c) 19:22, 16 February 2006 (UTC)