Proposal policy draft 2

The **proposal policy** involves ESB's proposal system for making changes to the wiki. This is very important to the wiki's decision-making process and is a great way to get the community involved.

## Proposal policy

All changes to policies, guidelines, and user rights must be discussed and voted upon with a proposal at ESB:Proposals. Any user may start a proposal for the community to discuss.

Discussions outside proposals such as on message walls and forum threads are not used to make major decisions and/or policy changes, but can be used to bring up issues for a proposal.

### Format for official proposals

All official proposals are to be conducted at ESB:Proposals.

All proposals will be conducted in two stages:

Concerns stage
* Anyone can start a proposal for the concerns stage.
* Proposals remain open for a minimum of 7 days and may be open for a maximum of 14 days, during which everyone has the opportunity to voice their concerns about the proposal.

* Concerns are considered valid if they contain a question in regards to the proposal or mark an issue. Concerns that do not do so are considered invalid and may be marked as resolved immediately.

* Concerns may be marked as resolved by an assistant, an administrator, the author of the concern, or the author of the proposal and may be remarked as unresolved by an administrator or assistant.

* After 4 days without valid concerns, the proposal may be moved to the voting stage

Voting stage
* Only ESB crew members can move proposals to the voting stage.
* Using what was discussed in the concerns stage, the proposal author or any ESB crew member can move the proposal with any needed changes to the voting stage. After 7 days of voting, the voting stage will be closed.

### Exceptions

If further discussions are required, the proposal may be open for a longer period of time. The author of a proposal may withdraw their proposal at any time.

If a proposal is redundant with a recent proposal or if a proposal is created that is considered unnecessary, it may be closed by a majority vote of the active admins and bureaucrats.

### Closing proposals

In order for the proposal to pass, a 70% majority supporting the proposal in the voting stage is required, not counting neutrals. Otherwise, the proposal fails to pass.

If a proposal closes and an agreement is not reached, another proposal may be created for further discussion. Any bureaucrat or administrator can close the voting stage.

When a proposal passes, the decision is final. Unless otherwise stated, the policy change takes effect immediately.

### Voting

All users of ESB are entitled to vote on all matters as long as 1 week has passed since their first edit. Any user that is blocked will have their vote void if they are still blocked when the discussion is closed.

Vote by typing either of the following in the relevant sections:

* `# {{Support}} ~~~~` to produce
	+ Template:Support Example (talk • contribs) 09:01, August 6, 2020 (UTC)
* `# {{Neutral}} ~~~~` to produce
	+ Template:Neutral Example (talk • contribs) 09:01, August 6, 2020 (UTC)
* `# {{Oppose}} ~~~~` to produce
	+ Template:Oppose Example (talk • contribs) 09:08, August 6, 2020 (UTC)

Any user removing votes from their own promotion request will have their entire request or nomination invalidated. The user is then not allowed to make a request for any position for 3 months and ineligible for nomination for 2 months.

A user cannot vote on their own promotion request, user rights review, or user of the month nomination. They are, however, allowed to comment, ask, and answer questions.