Tardis:Changing policy

From time to time, policies need to be changed. This document gives you some tips about how to effectively lobby for new or amended rules for the wiki.

Go to the right place
Discussions happen in a lot of places on the wiki. But if you want to change a policy on this wiki, head straight for Forum:The Panopticon. That way, the whole community knows where to come if they want to participate in discussions that change our rules.

One discussion only
It's important that you create only one discussion at Forum:The Panopticon to argue for change. Do not start multiple discussions on talk pages. The only place that policy can be changed on this wiki is at Forum:The Panopticon. You may of course invite people to join the main Forums discussion by leaving messages elsewhere, but don't create multiple points of discussion.

Be direct, but not aggressive
Use direct, clear language. A vague proposal won't tend to generate much support. Be as brief as you can be without leaving anything out: if people are greeted by a rambling wall of text, they might just skip it. If you have multiple important points to go over, use section headings, or at least paragraph breaks, to structure your argument instead of just writing down a stream-of-consciousness rant.

In any case, you should remain as objective as possible. Don't yell at people. Just stick to telling us what you want to change and why.

A good practice is to start out your discussion like this:

I think should be changed in because of.

Don't assume a positive outcome
The point of discussion is to solicit other people's opinions. Their opinion may be "no". Therefore, you should not pre-emptively edit the wiki on the assumption that your proposal will be accepted. You have to wait until the discussion is closed by an administrator.

Though it's fine to fiercely advocate your position, learn how to read the writing on the wall. If it's clear that others are not in agreement with you, let it go. Don't keep fighting for a lost cause, unless you're bringing some significant, new arguments to the discussion. Repeating the same arguments, without adding anything to them, is tiresome — and it may be used as evidence by the administrative staff that the discussion has run its course.

Closing administrators are often participants
At Wikipedia, it's bad form for an administrator involved in a discussion to also be the one that closes it. But they have the advantage of a large cadre of hundreds of administrators. We've only got about five active administrators at any given time — most of whom will have participated in the discussion in question. In order to get anything done, it is often the case that administrators who were involved in the discussion — or even those who started it — are also the ones who close it, though we try to avoid this for particularly controversial discussions, and especially for inclusion debates.

It is incumbent on every administrator to close in favour of the actual consensus, rather than the outcome they would like to have happened. That said, consensus often does not mean that the majority wins. If a majority says the moon is made of cheese — the closing administrator not only can disregard the majority, they should do so. Only in very rare circumstances, such as a purely aesthetic judgement call regarding the Wiki's visual design, will things sometimes fall to a simple show of hands or vote.

One possible cause for a problematic majority to arise is that the conversation thus far may not have taken into account various salient points. In such a case, generally, the administrator who discovered these points should either extend the thread's lifespan to bring them up, or close the present thread as unresolved and order the opening of a new thread. Outside of special circumstances, it would be bad form to actually enact a policy change based on their own interpretation of points which the community was not able to discuss.

Respect archive status
To keep the Forums functioning, discussions must be archived. Once a thread is archived, it should generally remain archived. If you'd like to revisit the topic of a thread, please start a new discussion and add a link back to the original thread. If you have small questions or corrections regarding an archived thread's closing post, used the talk page (the Forum talk:Topic to the actual thread's Forum:Topic), or else ping the closing admin on their talk page.