The document discusses governance and decision-making on Wikipedia, highlighting principles such as consensus, transparency, and the role of various community members like experts and administrators. It also outlines the types of decisions made within the platform, including article quality assessments and conflict resolution. The engagement process involves selecting an area of focus, participating in discussions, and reporting back on observations.

1. Governance & decision-making on Wikipedia consensus, transparency, meritocracy, impermanence

3. background and inspirations: 1. government consensus-based systems (e.g. Iroquois, Quaker) democratic government (more evident in later structures)

4. background and inspirations: 2. internet & technology culture online communities: Slashdot, usenet, email lists open source/free software culture wiki culture

5. background and inspirations: 3. established practices academia journalism role of scientific method and outputs

6. The Five Pillars it's an encyclopedia, dummy! just the facts, ma'am best happy hour ever: free beer AND free speech! play nice, or no cookie! oh....never mind.

7. Social/organizational concepts: 1. consensus how to determine consensus? who gets to determine consensus? how do we select those people?

8. Social/organizational concepts: 2. identity anonymity conflicts of interest sock puppetry canvassing scarcity of participants in a given decision

9. Social/organizational concepts: 3. roles experts children arbitrators administrators gnomes programmers bot creators

10. Types of decisions 1. Michel on peer assessment [[WP:DYK]]: the "Did you know..." feature of the main page [[WP:GA]]: "Good Articles" are reviewed by one Wikipedian [[WP:FA]]: "Featured Article" is the highest rating, reviewed by any number of Wikipedians

11. Types of decisions 2. other types selecting administrators conflicts of interest article categorization bot approval software improvement/bug fixes dispute resolution individual articles: article talk pages interrelated articles: WikiProjects how to welcome newcomers outreach: contacting media, museums, schools

12. Exercise 1. Choose an area: article quality: FA candidate [[WP:FAC]] DYK [[Template talk:DYK]] article deletion [[WP:AFD]] editor behavior admin candidacy: [[WP:RFA]] dispute resolution: [[WP:RFC/A]] conflict of interest [[WP:COIN]] technical: bot approval [[WP:RFBOT]] 2. (10 minutes) Review a number of the discussions/decisions; write down your observations 3. (40 minutes) Choose one and participate! 4. (20 minutes) Report back to the group

13. presenters Pete Forsyth Lead Consultant, Wiki Strategies project design team, Public Policy Initiative [[ User:Peteforsyth ]] www.wikistrategies.net Dr. Michel Aaij Associate Professor, School of Liberal Arts Auburn Montgomery [[ User:Dr Aaij ]]