Wikibooks:General voting rules/Proposal/Version 1

Wikibooks users should look for consensus rather than stay on their own positions. However, there are situations where "majority wins" voting is the best solution, like Book of the month and Collaboration of the Month awards, or where consensus cannot be achieved or where it needs to be shown clearly that most people supported a particular proposal.

Terms

Vote is the action of discussing a topic, casting opinions, and reaching consensus. Votes are not performed by anonymous ballots, and every vote or comment should be accompanied by the username of the person casting the vote. The easiest way to do this is by following every comment that you write with --~~~~.

Proposal means subject of the vote here. Whether it is request for adminship, vote for deleting a book or making it book of the month or attempt to make proposed policy enforced, all these cases will be called just proposal.

Who has right to vote?

All registered wikibooks users have the right to vote, although users that are suspected of voting in bad faith will have their votes removed. Wikibooks operates on a "one vote per person" rule, not "one vote per username". This means that if you maintain multiple usernames, you may only cast a meaningful vote with one of them. Sockpuppets will not be allowed for use in voting.

While new users are encouraged to get involved with discussions and helping to plan future directions for this project, it is considered bad form to make your one and only editorial contribution to Wikibooks involving casting votes on opinion pages. If you are new to Wikibooks, try to read up on the issues involved and help participate in writing content first, to get a sense of understanding about this project. Regular active contributors will be more highly regarded on their opinions anyway.

Users must be signed in to cast a vote, and anonoymous votes will not be counted. Every vote should be appropriately signed, or else an {{unsigned}} template can be used to identify the voter.

What does consensus mean?

Consensus is the requirement to have general acceptance from the community. As wikibooks is not a democracy, we do not define "consensus" to be a particular percentage of the vote. However, we do not require that a particular vote obtain complete agreement from all parties involved. If dissenting issues are presented, an effort should be made to compromise.

Consensus also cannot be declared prematurely. A vote should be allowed to remain for at least 2 weeks from the time of the last comment, before the final outcome is decided upon. This will allow time for all users to have a say on the proposal.

How to prepare vote?

It should be made clear what is the subject of the vote and what are consequences of the vote. The proposal should not be altered during voting (except spelling/grammar/formatting corrections). If the meaning of the proposal has changed after any users have voted, the vote should be cancelled or started from the beginning. Users casting votes after a vote has been cancelled or restarted should be notified of the changes and encouraged to cast another vote.

It is a good habit to notify other users about the vote, for example in Wikibooks:Bulletin board or Wikibooks:Staff lounge. This does not apply for subjects specific to a single book. In such cases that apply to only a single book, the notification can occur on the main page of the book, or on the talk pages of the book. Some changes, such as those changes that only affect a single book or a single bookshelf might not require a vote, and wikibookians are encouraged to be bold when making contributions that will have a positive effect. If a bold action results in a problem or dissention, a vote can then be held to finalize the issue.

Vote results

The voting process should be long enough to reach a concensus, and to hear opinions from any interested wikibookians. There is no set time limit to a vote, and it can persist, undecided, until a consensus is reached. Votes that have reached consensus must be allowed to sit for at least 1 week from the time of the last vote, to ensure that no additional votes or opinions are voiced. When a vote is reaching a close, it is a good idea to announce the close of the vote in a public forum, such as Wikibooks:Staff lounge, or Wikibooks:Bulletin board.

Once a consensus has been reached and maintained for at least 1 week or more, the vote can be declared over, and the final result announced. The debate and voting text may be archived immediately. If the vote is on a matter of policy, the new policy takes effect immediately after the vote has been decided.

Additional rules

This policy does not cover all possibilities, but gives general, basic rules. Everyone can start a vote with more rules and restrictions, provided that they do not violate this policy. Some common occurances, such as Book of the Month, or Collaboration of the month votes have their own voting rules, and votes are calculated numerically, not by concensus.