Board of Trustees election question In your candidate statement you point out that there have been many disputes over policy and process recently and that these represent a challenge to Wikipedia What solutions do you propose to solve these problems I m not looking for a list of new edicts just a general sense of the direction in which you would take us Thanks Dear Cynical Thank you for your question and I m sorry for the slight delay in responding to you I think the best way of answering this very pertinent point would be to describe the overall methodology I would hope to implement as I think all the major problems that have started to show up relating to community affairs probably fall roughly under the same set of methods necessary for a resolution which I will outline below Firstly and probably foremost liason with the community by the Wikimedia Foundation has been in my opinion generally quite poor with regard to transparency of decision making and the involvement of the Wikipedia community in decision making activities Of course Wikipedia is not a democracy and nor should it be really since the goal is after all to create an encyclopaedia but the volunteer editors are nonetheless stakeholders in the project and just as is practiced in business projects thorough consultation with all stakeholder groups is vital to the success of organisational management To date we have seen controversial policy implementation brought in by fiat without prior direct consultation q v WP CSD T1 relating to the userbox affair WP OFFICE and oversight privileges which has created undue animosity from both those areas of the community opposing the decision and external critical entities who disapprove of unilateral enaction of controversial changes such as Wikitruth and Wikipedia Review which has the effect of harming the reputation of our project through the characterisation by these organisations of Wikipedia as a dictatorship We thus have a whole plethora of issues that would be remedied by involving the community more thoroughly in decision making perhaps via some sort of policy development system It could be called Wikipedia Proposed policy changes whereby the Board posts the proposed changes and users discuss but not vote on the various changes This would hopefully in some cases highlight the issues that would make the proposed change problematic and indeed may well serve to generate alternative ideas on better ways of solving the issue It would in addition mean that resoundingly unpopular changes could be easily detected prior to implementation and would theoretically also permit the Board a greater deal of latitude for proposing policies versus simply enacting them essential for large scale problem solving on a project of this magnitude Secondarily there is a lack of direct analysis of indepth issues relating to particular subject areas on Wikipedia the finer issues relating to article content in specific groups such as whether particular article subjects are noteworthy enough for inclusion on Wikipedia appear to be overlooked creating bizarre incongruities between different WikiProjects decisions and where authority direction would be advantageous it is avoided q v the fair use images debates and also the Kelly Martin RfC fiasco This also links in with issues over authority being held by a single Oracle without sufficient delegation to deal with an organisational structure that has outgrown its initial size delegation is an essential part of procedural agility within any organisation and it is this that needs implementation I propose the creation of Focus Groups that deal with specific issues on Wikimedia projects comprised of editors with expertise in the particular areas which are given some level of control over the enaction of changes in each area semi demi gods I suppose As well as the increase of delegation within the Wikimedia organisational structure I would also advise the Board taking a more proactive stance on solving issues with the community whilst incorporating the elements of consultation I described above Thirdly more attention needs to be paid towards the reduction of conflict on Wikipedia The arbcom solves disputes but doesn t in my opinion reduce conflict overall looking at arbitration from a wider perspective the function of the Arbcom has become more punitive rather than curative We have an overloaded mediation system both the Wikipedia Mediation Committee and the Wikipedia Mediation Cabal are overburdened and are short staffed If we are going to have a project that will survive into the future which I sincerely hope we shall we will have to put better measures in place to keep editing temperature as low as p