Wikibooks talk:Ad hoc administration committee

Are you planning/proposing to implement an effective (auditable) voting system or stick with the one sock puppet one vote "consensus" survey system pioneered by Wikipedia? Lazyquasar 18:40, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Currently, for WB:BOTM and WB:COTM, any user with 20 edits can vote. Users around here seem to be reluctant to discount votes from those who have 20 edits, even if they appear to be sockpuppets. For an "editorial board" (or an "editorial council", as I prefer to call it), I would suggest approval voting, a system like BOTM and COTM, except that the winners would be the top five, instead of the top one.


 * For the council to be effective, it would need to start with only reserve powers, acting when other mechanisms fail. Also, there must be a mechanism for the community to declare no-confidence and force the council to disband, so that the council does not hijack the wiki from the community. I remain undecided about whether to support the creation of such board or council. --Kernigh 05:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * At the Staff Lounge there seemed to be some reasonable arguments in favour of a "loose" council or board. This is why I have watered down the proposal to the idea of a loose group of administrators who enforce policy as required (ie: only when there is real trouble) rather than any elaborate scheme. This committee would be a backstop rather than a frequently used organ. I would hope that the Editing disputes policy and No personal attacks policy would keep the peace in normal circumstances. RobinH 11:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this should be an enforced policy

 * 1) RobinH 18:58, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) German Men92 15:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

No, this policy should be rejected

 * 1) Jguk 12:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC) First, please note that we should have a well-publicised discussion period before having any policy vote, and then the vote should also be well-publicised, have clearly stated success v fail criteria and a time limit. As far as the proposal is concerned it is bureaucratic and wholly unnecessary. What sort of problems is it meant to resolve? Jguk 12:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * If a policy is enforced there must be some form of enforcement process - otherwise it can just be ignored. This proposal is to solve the problem of the absolute absence of any enforcement apparatus in Wikibooks. Without an enforcement mechanism there is no point in having "enforced" policies. Are you are against the idea that any policies should be enforced? RobinH 13:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * But there is an enforcement procedure - namely that anyone who sees a policy breach can act sensibly to resolve that knowing that they do so with community support. We are a relatively slow volume wiki, but we have 18 active administrators plus many other users who are not administrators who enforce policy. If you are concerned about a significant breach that does not look like it will be rectified, then you should follow it up on the staff lounge. That should work. If that gets no response, it'll probably because no-one agrees with you that it is worth worrying about, Jguk 17:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * But an item in the staff lounge may easily be ignored. This does not mean that "no-one agrees", it just means that people are either too busy or do not want to get involved. Even if an item is not ignored and 3 users suggest enforcement this can just be ignored by the offender! The staff lounge is frequently archived and all the offender need do is enter reams of text to ensure a rapid archive. What you are suggesting is simply putting off any structured response to violation of enforced policies until something truly dire occurs.
 * The simple truth is that "enforced policy" has no more meaning than "proposed policy" if there is no enforcement mechanism. We must at least have a minimal enforcement apparatus. RobinH 11:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Why do we need to include an additional level of bureaucracy in the clean-up process? Any user or administrator, met with a violation of policy, is free to change the page content to match policy, or solve the dispute through acceptable means. What we need perhaps is to finalize the dispute resolution policy, and then we won't need this. I vote no to this policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 17:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) I don't think we need this policy in current shape. As Whiteknight has said before, this is another lever of bureaucracy and we are currently able to cope with violating of enforced polices. --Derbeth talk 20:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) I looked at the proposed policy, and I think it has good ideas, including the review of policy enforcement decisions by a loose panel of admins, who afterall have recieved some level of community support. I think this less-than-formal structure fits well with the culture here at 'books. However, I have some concerns before I can support such a policy, including what authority and what steps such a panel can use. Are we establishing mini, temporary, Wikipedia-style Arbitration Committees who can ban users for particularly bad actions or behavior? If we are, does this policy require Wikimedia Foundation Board of Directors approval before it is enacted? Is there a danger of users engaging in judge shopping by getting three of their admin friends to form a tribunal? Additionally, the policy's requirement of mandatory action after a single user's request could result in abuse of admin time and effort. Frivilious cases should be able to be dismissed without forming a tribunal. What happens if enough of the active admins refuse to participate in a dispute brought to them? Just some random concerns. Gentgeen 08:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 4) This is unnecessarily bureaucratic. Kellen T 16:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)