Issues

This page is designed to be a central directory of information about the major issues before the WikiMedia community. Each issue has its own separate page. Everyone is welcome to edit these pages.

The issue pages below are organized on this page by their state of development. To see lists of active issue pages organized by topic see: Category:Issues

Proposed issue pages

Note: The following list are issues that do not yet have an issue page. To add an issue to this list edit this section and follow the commented instructions.

Community decision making
Problems with scaling consensus, encouraging broad community involvment, the status quo vs. major changes to policy, groupthink, strategic planning, making the process clear and transparent. Long term memory: It is hard to have discussions that last longer than one on-wiki debate cycle, especially when there is no permanent namespace for issues discussed. How do we know who the community is, and if they are represented in important discussions?
BLP
The project doesn't have the resources to monitor or maintain all of the biographies of living people. Should we measure the impacts. How does Rodovid handle this? [1]
Problematic pages
Content dispute resolution: (hundreds of variations on this theme have been discussed - worth digging up. how can we manage these disputes more effectively? how does the current system end up in gridlock? does facilitation help? meditation? medication?)
Unmaintained minor articles
There are a great number of minor articles (eg villages in India) that are okay as stubs when newly created but are not watched, reviewed, cleaned up or copyedited after subsequent unreferenced, unencyclopedic and other problematic additions.
Policies
Arguing over vague policies. Editors trying to alter policies to give them an advantage in content disputes. Editors controlling policy pages to keep "their" version intact, while ignoring discussions or consensus. Policy changes by persistent small groups. Vague policies]] (how can the clarity of policies be assessed? cleaned up? what are the dangers of unclear policies? clarity a learnable skill we can all practice? thoughts on visualization and page layout.
Addition and retention of users
How do we handle and prep for burnout? how to make it easy to relax, and to cool and come back? Community stagnation,recruiting new editors and retaining current editors Making contributions easier.
Article rating
Should there be a systems of rating articles, if so what is the process and what standards and criteria should be used.
MediaWiki Software
What new features need to be added. How do we test out new variations on features, assess changes, try different things without annoying everyone?) New feature design and planning, interaction with developers.

Issue pages getting started

Note: Once an issue page has been started it should be listed in this section. The first goals when starting an issue page are:

Analyzing the problem
Researching the history of the problem
Cross linking the page to discussions about the problem
Defining the problem with concise open-ended language
Creating a list of criteria or community concerns that any solution should meet
Generating community consensus on the definition of the problem

Well defined issues

Note: Page names may need renaming to correspond to the concise definition that has been created. New goals include:

Brainstorming alternative solutions
Evaluating solutions, documenting concerns
Adapting proposals to address concerns
Plans to test community consensus

Issues nearing community consensus

Note: Well defined issues that are nearing consensus will have developed a plan to test community consensus. The issue is this list are in the process of implementing that plan.

Resolved and archived issues

Note: Issues that that have been resolved -- either successfully or not -- are listed below. Before the pages are archived, they should be evaluated. If the issue was not successfully resolved, it can be refactored and the process restarted at any stage that seems reasonable. Once there is no longer activity related to the issue, it can be archived.