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This proposal outlines the structure of an Editorial Council.
The Editorial Council is a panel consisting of seven editors. The council's mission is to resolve content disputes and act as an arbiter in such cases. The council's purpose is not to determine comma placement or paragraph order in articles. Nor is every edit war's underlying cause worth examining. The focus of the council would be on "big picture" content issues. These would include:
It is not the role of the council to examine disputes between specific users or groups of users. User conduct is entirely outside the scope of the council and should, as always, be directed to the Arbitration Committee. This does not prevent the council from examining the underlying causes of a specific user conduct case, but it does limit their assessments to purely editorial matters.
Almost every editor's first question upon reading this proposal will be "Why do we need this?" Allow me to cover a few reasons.
The Editorial Council process would be as follows:
Appeals may be brought up at anytime, providing there is sufficient new evidence that could alter the outcome.
The council would consist of nine editors. All nine members of the council would be elected by two rounds of popular vote. Ideally, members would be selected for their neutrality, fair-mindedness and ability to hear both sides of an argument. The elections would be carried out concurrently with the Arbitration Committee elections.
All terms are for one year. There are no term limits. Editors may not sit simultaneously on the Arbitration Committee and the Editorial Council.
Below I will attempt to explain some of the most common concerns to the establishment of an Editorial Council.
I assume you refer to Foundation issues, which states that some issues are beyond debate. One of these inviolable planks of Wikipedia states that "the 'wiki process' [is] the decision mechanism on content." Of course, this refers to WP:CONSENSUS. Concerns have been voiced that giving seven editors, no matter how highly regarded they may be, should not have such broad control over Wikipedia's content. Furthermore, it has been voiced that the establishment of an Editorial Council is a violation of the wiki process. While these are reasonable concerns, they do not apply to the creation of an Editorial Council.
First, to the critical Foundation issue concern. Since an Editorial Council would neither create new consensus nor destroy or change existing consensus, it poses absolutely no threat to the wiki process. Unless either the Board of Trustees or Jimmy Wales indicates that in their opinion an Editorial Council as proposed does go against the Foundation issues, it shouldn't be a concern in discussing the council's merits and drawbacks.
The creation of an Editorial Council would greatly benefit the community of editors. The presence of an Editorial Council would allow for much more productive discussions. It would give the community something to fall back on should discussions grow stagnant or repetitive, allowing for closure instead of confusion. The community would also be assisted by knowing that once all the points and made and all the variables considered in a discussion, there's a body that's capable of taking all the Lego-like pieces of the discussion and assembling them into a consensus from which the editors can work.
This is a change to how our community operates. Of that there is no doubt. While I will leave to the Wikihistorians just how big of a change it is, it will change the way we approach content disputes on Wikipedia. But that isn't a bad thing. It's true, we've been able to run amok for the past seven years with little of the editorial oversight that other encyclopedias benefit from. And it's true, a lot of good has come from that chaos. Nobody's asking anyone to forget, but we have to look to the future. Rather than being seen as an intrusion into community discussion, it should be seen as a natural growth and progression of it.
Exactly where it is. The Arbitration Committee has previously stated that it does not rule on content disputes, only conduct disputes. There would be no overlap in roles and responsibilities between the two groups. Simultaneously holding the elections of both bodies is a simple matter of convenience.
You know, there's this tendency to treat Wikipedia as if we're a sovereign nation. As if Wikipedia had a king, a parliament and a nobility. But that's not true. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia, not the community. And while it's true that we make our own laws and our own justice, we are not a civilization.
And because we are not a civilization, we should not look at an Editorial Council as a bureaucracy. Bureaucracy's negative connotations in Western society often obfuscate the issue. An Editorial Council would benefit the encyclopedia's development. An Editorial Council would benefit the community's work towards that goal. Those are the only conditions that matter.
Wikipedia's NPOV policy would obviously be critical in every decision made by the council. It is naive to assume that the community would not self-correct and block the seating of unsuitable candidates during the elections.
Many have noted the existence of similar mechanisms that may fulfill the proposed role of the Editorial Council.
While these mechanisms may have a role in handling small to mid-level content disputes, they are ill-suited for the kind of complex large-scale disputes that the Editorial Council is designed for.
Concerns have been raised over whether the findings of the Editorial Council would be binding or non-binding. This is an unwieldy zero-sum comparison, especially when this council would need to be able to be both flexible and capable of operating in the grey areas between black and white.
This council should not and cannot rule by fiat. This body is not meant to issue edicts and instructions. Instead, the Editorial Council should rely on soft power and peer pressure to support its findings. My hope is that the community would recognize the value of input by a body staffed by its most talented editors, especially a body whose sole interest is improving the encyclopedia. My belief is that the community would be overjoyed to be able to use the moderate voice of the council to isolate and flush out extreme POV warriors on either side of a dispute. Our goal should be for the community and the council, both listening to one another and working together, to establish a moderate and common path along which we can all improve the encyclopedia.
Disclaimer: This should not be interpreted as an actual case. Don't let its outcome decide your support or opposition.
I hope this cleans up any confusion about the actual process. I've tried not to go into too much detail, but I hope this goes into enough to make the process clear to understand.
None. Please go to the talk page and contribute to the ongoing discussion and the poll!