Tardis:Who writes policy

Policy is written and published by administrators or those that they designate. The exact wording of policy matters is not usually placed before the community for approval. Instead, the rule becomes binding as is when published, and remains so until and unless further comment from the community decides to change specific wording within the rule, or to suspend the rule altogether.

The reason for this process is simple. Most rules are derived from one or more precedent forum discussions. These discussions had to be closed or archived by an admin in the first place. The writing of the policy is merely a re-factoring of a now-closed community discussion. Thus, the community has already been afforded a period of debate on the matter.

Doing so again would simply be a waste of time, given the small number of editors who are at any one time engaged with the discussions at The Panopticon.

Matters which are written into policy without first being discussed at the forum are rare, but possible. Most such policies have to do with technicalities — that is, things that are necessary to comply with the limits of the MediaWiki software that underpins this wiki. Other such policies are matters of basic English grammar, like T:COMMA or T:PERIOD, or decisions which are essentially arbitrary, but consistent with other policies that have been decided by forum consensus. For instance, T:HONOURIFICS was never specifically agreed by the community, but it is the natural outgrowth of T:SPELL, which was enacted by our earliest forum debates.

However, because the community retains the ability to change policy through discussion, it is not a fundamental challenge to the rights of the individual community member for an admin to publish a rule without their direct consent.

Except in cases where the community desires something that is technically impossible, the consensus of the community always has the power to veto or change any rule.