John Lee wrote:
Stan Shebs wrote:
It would be nice to have more internal leadership. I think part of
the trick is to model after professional societies and trade unions,
where most leadership positions are part-time on a volunteer basis.
For instance, projects could elect lead editors, whose special role
during their terms is to preside over discussion on issues, and then
make an executive decision, thus eliminating the indecision arising
from those 56%-44% votes (think of city naming conventions). A lead
for user page policy could have saved a lot of userbox anguish by
being on top of the practice from the beginning.
Stan
The problem is that these positions are often elected - and as we
have learnt from the debacle of this and last last year's arbcom
elections, campaigning for these positions is *brutal*. There'll be
even more anguish if the 56%-44% vote decides more than just one
issue. My suggestion would be something similar to the current arbcom
elections, but less divisive. The community nominates certain people
(how this is done is up to them), who will then write their candidate
statements, etc. Those who oppose/support must provide
links/diffs/etc. showing why they oppose/support. For instance,
"Oppose. [a few links to instances of POV pushing]" Unless the
situation may be ambiguous, there should be no need to say "POV
pusher" or "bad attitude". Then, the board will review the
candidates' statements (and those of the people opposing/supporting
them), and make its decision. (If this was a bit hard to follow,
please let me know.) It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but I think it has
a bit of potential if we're going to have a "lead editor".
Arbcom is perhaps the hardest kind of position to elect, because the
people involved have to get in the middle of all the worst fights in
WP. To take the project I've been involved with the longest,
WikiProject Ships, there have only been a couple serious arguments in
the nearly three years of its existence. Most of the time it works to
have one person propose, one or two say "good idea", and the rest
silently acquiesce in the new order of things. Other times you get a
proposal, an objection, a bit of discussion, and then deadlock; nobody
wants to call a vote even, because it would simply numerify the near
even split. The irony is that everybody is acting in good faith, and
if a "first among equals" were to break the tie, project members would
just go along. For many projects, I imagine that if someone were to put
a hand up, that person would be elected by acclaim; others may indeed
need to set up more of a formal balloting process.
I'm not sure how much WP as a whole needs to get involved. It might be
sufficient just to announce that projects are free to have "leads", let
them each experiment, and then later recommend to all projects what
seems to work the best.
To tie back to AfD, if it were a project's prerogative to define
deletion criteria, then AfD could become more of a routing mechanism
that delegates articles' fates to projects. I'm not going to scan
AfD every day on the off-chance that a nautical topic comes up, but
would take time for a lower-volume "AfD/Ships", for instance.
Stan
Ah, a bit of a misunderstanding there. I thought you were referring to
different Wikimedia projects, and not WikiProjects. I still think having
a general "lead editor" to break the deadlock would be a good idea,
though. Jimbo and Angela used to play this role on en until their
fundraising and PR work to them elsewhere. I think my proposal would be
applicable here, especially as the "lead editor" would be the board's
representative for the project, allowing him to make the tough calls
Jimbo, et al used to make but no now longer can't. This devolution of
power might be a feasible idea, as right now, our wild and woolly way of
resolving content disputes, etc. just isn't working, as UninvitedCompany
has pointed out - at some point, we'll either have to find a better way
than calling a vote, or just have the project break down into anarchy.
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])