This musing came to my attention after an excellent case study when on Jimbo's talk page discussing COI. Coretheapple (T-C-L) and Jusdafax (T-C-L) suggested some kind of "auditor" which would try to prevent COI editing and have advanced permissions. A flawed proposal, but its heart was in the right place.
Core suggested forming a committee of "interested editors" and having them develop an idea and report to the WMF, very much like how a boss would tell his employees to formulate a plan and report back to him. Presumably then the Board would vote on it. I replied no, because I personally belive such a policy changing thing like that needs wide community consensus. Jusdafax said that was precisely the reason why it shouldn't go before the community:
As we saw with the COI TOU proposal, the WMF tends to throw out community input in favor of their own internal strategies. But the TOU is by definition their own, while policy is the community's.I will be blunt and say again, this proposal will never be built properly, much less get off the ground, if it has to gain community consensus. The community failed to enact even the mildest community de-Adminship reforms back in 2010. Even a cursory look at the process at WP:CDA shows systemic admin resistance to that proposal. The idea of Auditors is much more radical, by comparison.
So I ask you, when will stuff like this become the norm? In particular, when will the WMF begin dictating our policy without community input?
What role will consensus play in the years to come, as the encyclopedia gets bigger and bigger, and the editor number gets smaller and smaller, and more drastic changes need to be made?
