Wikipedia:Wikipedia Committees

The following is a proposal for a straightforward revamping of our Wikipedia Governance, with an eye for specifically addressing all of the core intractable problem areas that are repeatedly brought up as issues by the long-term and regular users of this website, who actively participate in matters of project governance. This is more complex, lightly, than our current system, but ultimately is very simple, and painfully so, compared to the dangerously undefined and unable to scale nature of our present non-existent governance.

Wikipedia is one of the Top 5 websites on the entire planet. We need this. We need to vigorously reject and discard the prior politics that guided this website, and the inappropriate "cults of personality" that have historically dominated many aspects of this website's governance. Wikipedia has no need of self-appointed personalities, and has a clear need of a system that de-powers any lone individuals or groups from control over specific governance areas.

The structuring of these proposals are very simple, as can be seen below.

What does this fix? What is the need for this?

Simple:

1. There is a rapidly growing consensus that people want the scope, power, and abilities of both the present Arbitration Committee and Jimbo Wales to be clearly defined. This accomplishes both trivially.

   Note: Wales's power, which is granted him by the Community, per the Wikimedia Foundation[1], is 99% unchanged in this structure.

2. There is a rapidly growing consensus that the use of our traditional "consensus" methods of decision making seem to still be working alright for content matters, but not for anything related to Wikipedia project governance, or policy discussions, and that forward action on governance is presently impossible due to this.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The creation of the Policy Committee addresses that.
3. Appeals. This puts into place a very, very clearly defined and linear clarification of the dispute resolution process, and also puts in place a community-owned "finale" to the entire process, which has been lacking since the Wikipedia project was formed.
4. Scale. This solution can scale literally forever, as long as Wikipedia exists, and has zero reliance in any way, shape, or form, on any one individual or group of individuals.
5. Decentralize the power. This distributed, parallel structure is engineered in such a way as to systematically prevent any lone individual, or on-Wiki group, from taking a strong hand of control over any areas. All the historical users on this website that have inappropriate "power" will be relegated in some ways to the trenches in this sort of system. This is inherently a good thing.

Our idealized hierarchal structure

• This will scale indefinitely.
• No one may ever be on more than one Committee at a time.

Behavior: Arbitration Committee

• Role:

• The final arbiters of behavior-related dispute resolution, and over the user of Administrator tools that clearly go against established and accepted policy. Direct supervision of, and appointments of Checkusers and Oversighters.

• What:

• Straight elections based on sample system, no Jimbo Wales involvement.
• 2 year term limits. No one elected may run more than 2 consecutive terms on a single Committee, ever.
• Users must disclose their identity to the WMF.
• All cases must be public but evidence may be private.
• Decisions by the Arbitration Committee must be appealed to the Arbitration Committee at least once [before they may be appealed elsewhere added for clarification].

• Authority:

• Anything behaviorally related, including behavior of the other Committees and any user on-Wiki; a more traditional view of what the AC initially was intended to be.
• Checkuser/Oversight appointments/monitoring through the sub-group Audit Committee that already exists.
• May hear appeals of any behavior related (e.g. blocking, desysop, etc.) decision by Jimbo Wales.
• Writes policy for itself only, and may offer suggestions on Checkuser and Oversight policy.
• May initiate a case itself, as a body, as it always has historically.

• Limits:

• Barred from content or policy decisions at all times.
• May not countermand any policy or mandate issued by the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

Policy: Policy Committee

• Role:

• The final arbiters of policy-related dispute resolution, and intractable policy debates and referendums. In short, when all other discussion fails and both or multiple sides claim consensus, this group would sort it out and render a decision. May also offer simple clarifications and motions to offer advice on simpler yet intractable policy debates, or for policy interpretation.

• What:

• Straight elections based on sample system, no Jimbo Wales involvement.
• 2 year term limits. No one elected may run more than 2 consecutive terms on a single Committee, ever.
• Users do not have to disclose their identity to the WMF.
• All cases must be public, and no evidence may be private.
• Decisions by the Policy Committee must be appealed to the Policy Committee at least once.

• Authority:

• Anything policy related; including AC and Appeals committee policy by design as part of the check and balance theory of the Committees.
• May hear appeals of any policy related (e.g. policy by fiat, etc.) decision by Jimbo Wales.
• Basically, where the AC's ideal role is to finalize or finish intractable issues involving behavior and users themselves, this group does the same for intractable policy matters, or can answer questions of policy interpretation.
• Does not make new policy, but can interpret, clarify, or "remove" policy; analogous to how (ideally) the United States Supreme Court can rule on interpretations of law and the validity of a given law.
• Writes policy for itself only. Issues with these policies may be appealed to the Appeals Committee directly.

• Limits:

• Barred from content decisions, or specific behavioral decisions, of actions of specific users, at all times.
• May not initiate a case as a body; it must be brought based on existing policy questions, disputes, or needed clarifications.
• May not countermand any policy or mandate issued by the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

Checks and balances: Appeals Committee

• Role:

• The final arbiters of prior decisions by the Arbitration Committee, the Policy Committee, and Jimbo Wales. Has no purpose or function except to hear and decide in public cases that have already been appealed at least once to Jimbo Wales, the AC, or the PC, and has the power to void/remove any aspect of those decisions, or the decisions in their entirety. They may not change the decisions--only vacate and expunge, undoing them, correcting "wrongs".

• What:

• Straight elections based on sample system, no Jimbo Wales involvement.
• 2 year term limits. No one may sit on the Appeals Committee for consecutive terms.
• Users must disclose their identity to the WMF.
• Decisions by the Appeals Committee are final for themselves; this is the final "court of appeal", literally.
• All cases and decisions (with visible voting records) must be public but evidence may be private.
• User:Jimbo Wales has one permanent voting seat on the Appeals Committee, but is to be considered only "one of many".

• Authority:

• May overturn and/or void any decision or part of a decision by the Arbitration Committee or the Policy Committee (functionally, a line-item veto).
• Decisions by the Appeals Committee are final and binding on the Arbitration Committee, Policy Committee, and Jimbo Wales.
• May take appeals and has the power to void or vacate any decisions or actions by Jimbo Wales.
• Decisions to void a decision by the Appeals Committee as a body are final and binding on all Wikipedia users, including Jimbo Wales, and in theory could only be appealed to the Wikimedia Foundation.
• No other role.

• Limits:

• May not take a case that hasn't already been appealed to the Arbitration Committee, Policy Committee, or Jimbo Wales.
• May not set any new precedent or standing, beside to vacate or void as invalid existing decisions by the Arbitration Committee, Policy Committee, or Jimbo Wales.
• May not initiate a case as a body; it must be brought based on a prior decision by the AC or the PC, which has already been appealed at least once to that same body.
• May not countermand any policy or mandate issued by the Wikimedia Foundation itself.

Content Committee

There will be no such thing.

Jimbo & the Committees

Jimbo Wales, as Michael Snow, the leader of the Wikimedia Foundation clarified here in July 2009, is empowered by the local community, not the Foundation, and so Jimbo retains his "traditional role" subject to its normal limits as long as the community allows him. In this system with forward-looking plans to scale indefinitely, Jimbo would be on even par with the Arbitration Committee itself, subject to two very specific constitutional limitations by which he is bound:

• His theoretical and untested authority to not appoint someone to a given post who won an election is removed; elections are controlled by the community wholly going forward.
• His ability to make non-election and non-committee membership decisions remains what it is, but the Community in this system would have full authority (see Appeals Committee, below) to override Jimbo Wales if the situation required.
• His "traditional" role otherwise remains the same until such time as the community deems it should be changed, per Michael Snow's clarification that the local community and not the WMF or Jimbo Wales is in control of that role.

In simple language, the rank of authority for those who like things laid out simply works like this:

• Arbitration Committee is equal in authority over their areas to the
• Policy Committee, which is equal in authority over their areas to
• Jimbo Wales, who also has one voting seat on the Appeals Committee, but has no authority over any membership/elections of the Committees.

• --> The Appeals Committee as a body may void any decision or action by any of the three (Arbitration/Policy Committees/Jimbo), and the group as a whole is the final authority for any decisions except those handed down by the Wikimedia Foundation in a public statement.

Implications of what this system will bring long-term

1. Long-term simplification of our governance. Oxymoronic on it's surface--how will one Committee becoming three make things simpler?--but it will, in that there will now be a final way to close the most problematic of discussions, on policy and related matters, which is impossible today.
2. A way to stop gaming, manipulation, and long-term warring over policy definitions and systems at long last, via the Policy Committee.
3. Due to the combination of the Arbitration Committee, Policy Committee, and Appeals Committee, individual, historical "power users" that maintain or have acquired prominence or control over key areas of the project will be reduced in stature; individual users will be de-emphasized long-term to allow for people to truly stand on equal footing based on their arguments and understanding of policy, rather than who they are and how many users support them.
4. All users will have equal standing in such a system, on all manner of debates.
5. By expressly and constitutionally limiting the scope of what all three Committees can and cannot do, and by giving each Committee limited authority over each other (AC can investigate behavior by the PC; PC can on appeal review even AC policy; the Appeals group can vacate any of their decisions if they've already been appealed unsuccessfully only) we have a full system of checks and balances that prevents any group from having more power than the others.
6. The Appeals Committee, with it's broad ability to vacate any unsuccessfully-appealed decision by either the Arbitration Committee, the Policy Committee, or Jimbo Wales, is the ultimate fail safe we have never had on this website for addressing problematic issues.
7. This system will scale literally indefinitely.
8. Would require three elections, but this is not a Big Deal. Policy Committee elections in March; Appeals Committee in July.

Notes on determining elections

• Simple formats; Support/Oppose/Neutral.
• Alternately, if technically possible: Blind voting?
• Use this format to score them in ranking. Stupidly easy to automate tracking of this.
• Alternately: simple up and down percentages, only go into the fancier weighted method in the case of a tie.
• To maintain independence from outside influences/gaming, to be seated on a Committee, the Committee itself must ratify a given person to be seated within 2 weeks of the election via a public vote. If the ratification does not close as unsuccessful, or simply closes uncompleted within 2 weeks, the person is seated. In other words, to keep someone off the Committee, those who want him off must go on the public record of why they want him off. If someone is thus passed over, the next person is open to be seated from the election, in order.

See also

• WP:BOLD