Wikipedia talk:Governance reform/Policy Committee version 1

Hmm, so this is a proposal to make policy totally top-down? Maybe not the greatest idea. I don't know of any modern text on governance and management that really recommends that approach anymore. (if you can provide a reference for one, I'll certainly look). It also fails the requirements I posted earlier.

So it's cool that you've made a start, but think of something else? :-) Oh, I have an idea! --Kim Bruning (talk) 17:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you think that ArbCom, the model on which it was based, is "totally top-down", yes. But what it is as I thought it was, basically, a policy version of ArbCom, which seems to work fairly effectively. John Carter (talk) 00:03, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

• Don't understand the emphasis on drafting. Generally it is the dogsbodies not the elected reps who draft legislation policy. If all we need is drafters we can ask for volunteers.
• Your drafters apparently cannot initiate new policy, only act on the recommendation of existing power brokers (Jimbo, board, arbcom, etc), most of whom have expressed extreme reluctance to have anything to do with policy recently. Maybe they wouldn't find it so hard to say "we need a policy on X", though.
• they have to draft policy on demand. What happens if they don't want to?
• they cannot decide on implementation, but can only present their suggestions to the community. But the problem we actually have is that polcies get drafted, often rapidly, and then argued over endlessly by the community, or else are rendered redundant by "facts on the ground".
• members cannot even discuss policy they have been involved in drafting. Bad move...forces them to include the rhetorical justification of the the policy in the policy itself, a recipe for policy blather.

In contrast I'd like a committee which can close the argument by making a final ruling, on any policy it chooses including new ones generated both inside and outside the committee and also those describing its own operation. Given that WMF has legal ownership, there should obviously be some limits set to this by WMF. I would rather see the will of the community exercised on important, global issues via pol-com that via the usual !vote system because pol-com's electorate would be well-defined and validated, whereas anyone including IPs can show up and !vote. PaddyLeahy (talk) 20:11, 4 May 2008 (UTC)