Wikipedia:Decision Making Process

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For Wikipedia to be able to scale, it is agreed upon by many of its users that the project needs a decision making process to formalize those policies that should be consistently enforced. Such a process could also be used to interpret the policies in individual cases.

The following different types of process have been suggested:

[edit] Voting

[edit] Consensus

It has been suggested that decisions should be made strictly through a discussion process aimed at reaching a broad consensus that a certain decision should be implemented. For example, on the question whether users should be banned for consistently violating the NPOV policy, a discussion could be held where every interested party would present their arguments for and against a particular solution. If a consensus can be found, the respective solution is implemented. Otherwise, nothing is changed. See also: Wikipedia:Consensus.

Possible problems

Several criticisms can be brought against such a process. The success of a particular decision making process does not seem to depend on how good the arguments or how clear the opinions are, but merely on how motivated the individual participants are. Even when the majority clearly agrees that a certain action is necessary, a single individual motivated to post long justifications for their positions may justify the process ad infinitum. While it can be argued that this is desirable in order to hear all arguments, arguments often depend on a particular point of view, such as "humans cannot be trusted to act nicely", or the exact opposite. Thusly, arguments might quickly become deeply philosophical, about questions that have divided mankind for ages.

In other cases, a small minority might manage to get a particular change implemented for the simple reason that most people do not care enough about it to write detailed arguments against it. The majority may then, eventually, be surprised by a change that nobody really wanted.

[edit] Conclusions

What, then, can be learned from the above? The different options should be weighed against each other, and a decision should be made.