Wikipedia:Issues

This page is maintained by Wikiproject Community Facilitation. It is designed to be a central directory of information about the major issues before the Wikipedia community. Each issue has its own separate page. Everyone is welcome to edit these pages.


 * For guidelines about creating and editing issue pages, see Wikiproject Community Facilitation.
 * For lists of active issue pages organized by topic see: Category:Wikipedia community issues

The issue pages below are organized on this page by their state of development.

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Proposed issue pages

 * Community decision making
 * Problems with scaling consensus, encouraging broad community involvement, the status quo vs. major changes to policy, groupthink, strategic planning, making the process clear and transparent.


 * Problematic pages
 * Content dispute resolution: (hundreds of variations on this theme have been discussed - worth digging up. how can we manage these disputes more effectively?  how does the current system end up in gridlock?  does facilitation help?  meditation?  medication?)


 * Policies
 * Arguing over vague policies. Editors trying to alter policies to give them an advantage in content disputes. Editors controlling policy pages to keep "their" version intact, while ignoring discussions or consensus. Policy changes by persistent small groups. Vague policies. How can the clarity of policies be assessed?  cleaned up?  what are the dangers of unclear policies?  is clarity a learnable skill we can all practice?  Thoughts on visualization and page layout.


 * Governance issues
 * Term lengths, holding other positions, retention of privileges after resignation or end of terms, public perception, impeachment mechanisms. ArbCom scope -- should it have responsibilities beyond arbitrating disputes?  Is a different governance body needed?  The role of think-tanks and wikiprojects. When are committees helpful?  which current committees are active and useful?  more/less, and what are alternatives to the committee model? Standards for committee transparency?  should elected officials have extra accountability/responsibility?  Short and long-term dangers; implication for closed v. open channels


 * Addition and retention of users
 * How do we handle and prep for burnout? how to make it easy to relax, and to cool and come back? Community stagnation,recruiting new editors and retaining current editors  Making contributions easier.


 * Humor on Wikipedia
 * Is there a place for humor in articles? in the project or user namespaces?  some active groups of pages are deleted en masse.  are contributors who want to add to humorous pages hurting the project, and if so can their other contributions be saved or must they be run off?


 * User pages
 * How much freedom should people have over what is in their userspace? Can editors work on articles in userspace that might be inappropriate once finished?  Can they include jokes? personal photos? Should WP:Userboxes be banned?  What forms of social networking are appropriate?


 * Conflict resolution
 * Is mediation effective? How can more people be engaged with medcom?  Incivility -- how do we deal with incivil trolls and newbies?  Incivil admins and long-time users?  Bans and blocks -- there is perennial drama surrounding bannings.  Are there ways to reduce this?  Sandboxing, less aggressive engagement, less noisy appeal mechanisms?  should blocks be done punitively?


 * Article rating
 * Instant rating system, good article icon. Featured content of various types, and methods of getting there.  Article rating by groups, for WP 1.0.  Similar "A+" methods used on de:wp.


 * Talk pages
 * Software changes? (use forum software, run LiquidThreads, format formally). how can talk pages be improved?  should they be more prominently linked from articles? Are there easier ways to engage Wikipedia users.


 * Administrators
 * Adminship requirements (minimum article writing requirement), ways to encourage more admins. Abuse of powers, recall procedure.


 * MediaWiki Software
 * What new features need to be added. How do we test out new variations on features, assess changes, try different things without annoying everyone?) New feature design and planning, interaction with developers.
 * Watching features (count people watching a page - good or bad? set up specialpages that help track little-watched or overwatched pages?  other stats.  distributed rc patrol so each new change is seen by N people?


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Issue pages getting started

 * Long-term discussions
 * It is hard to have discussions that last longer than one on-wiki debate cycle, especially when there is no permanent namespace for issues discussed.


 * Threaded discussions
 * It is difficult for editors -- particularly those working in DR -- to create a structure for discussion; confusion often results


 * BLP
 * The project doesn't have the resources to monitor or maintain all of the biographies of living people. Should we measure the impacts.  How does Rodovid handle this?


 * Deletion policies
 * Clarity and efficiency for Reform#Can our deletion policy be clearer.2C and the process more efficient? Can we be more efficient? Speedy deletion issues: (which speedy policies cause trouble?  in what cases?  how can the process for improving those policies be improved?  should there be time limits on how speedies can be tagged/carried out?  are there places where we could use a quarantine that allows original submitters to see their work and how it's flagged but hide it from others?
 * Making AfD less obnoxious, alternatives to AFD for improving articles. Deciding whether to merge, turn into a section, redirect, cleanup, research, or delete. Broadening focus beyond just deciding whether to delete: How to delete properly - whether to save talk pages, how to preserve anything salvageable, how to notify contributors without driving them away.

Well defined issues
Issues nearing community consensus

Resolved and archived issues


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