Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-867021-20121206144439/@comment-100066-20121208232216

I hope I haven't hit a nerve with you. I truly do believe that we can talk things through and I am very glad that you opened this thread.

For the purposes of consensus, I am talking about major policy decisions like naming conventions, dealing with role-players, TRNs, etc. For bans, we do not seek consensus, but I think that for the most part, we follow a pretty consistent standard. It doesn’t always work out and we do disagree internally, but I think the cases in which the admins differ very strongly are rare. Do you have a specific example? Have I forgotten something?

I think we are getting better and better at consensus on the site. For example, we have all sought out each other’s opinions on the issues I mentioned above. As I check your message wall, you were asked by me to speak to the role-playing issue and by Spencer on the recent minor character policy. These are new examples and certainly do not excuse past overlooking, but I think we are getting better as we go along. This new forum will definitely make things easier. I think it is a great idea to have the “Abstain” category when we call a vote. That way, every admin can weigh in, even if their opinion is "no opinion" and we can see how the group is moving.

I am sorry that you never had a login on the original forums. In the past several years, we had very lengthy discussions about removing the Comics: namespace, Disambig templates, clone and robot naming conventions, fan art policies, and many others. I have always felt that my voice and everyone else’s voices were heard and that we only moved forward when we did have a solution that everyone could get on board with. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what everyone wanted, but everyone was able to say that they supported it.

To that end, I think that having a Leader or Judge would be a mistake. Have that much power in a single hand leaves us in a precarious position. Perhaps that person has a dramatic change of heart about how things should be run. Perhaps they get busy with other things and aren’t around to enact policy. Perhaps they decide to leave amicably, which leaves us in the position of choosing a new leader.

I think our current method of gaining consensus, while not perfect and perhaps not used well in the past, is improving dramatically and should still be our standard operating procedure. I welcome other opinions, of course.