What is the process for establishing and maintaining policies?

Question

The core question I'm looking to get an answer for is "What is a policy and how does it function?". Specifically, how does something become policy, and who is responsible for maintaining or reviewing those policies?

As a way to prompt answers to this core question, some sub-questions that might be addressed in answers are:

• Is there any kind of official guidelines that govern policies?
• What determines if a policy is valid or not?
• How do votes interact with policies?
• How are contentious policies handled?
• Is a majority needed to implement a policy, is consensus needed, or something else?
• Are moderators be allowed to overrule policies?
• What happens if a user does not follow a policy?
• Do policies get less valid with age?
• How long do policies last for?
• How are contradictory or conflicting policies handled?
• Can a more specific policy overrule part of a less specific policy?
• When are policies revisited?
• Does revisiting a policy invalidate the original?
• How should users determine what a policy is?
• Do policies need to be followed all the time, or just some times?

Answer 1

Answering the individual questions

Note that these "answers" are informal and reflect what I have seen occur in the past with these types of situations; they do not reflect what has always happened or will always happen, only what I would call the "typical" results:

Is there any kind of official guidelines that govern policies?

Aside from the following Q&A I am not aware of any rigid (or loose) guidelines regarding policies; only what generally happens to happen:

• What are the rules and policies of RPG.SE?

What determines if a policy is valid or not?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you use the word "valid"; just about anything can be a policy if it has (Meta) community consensus.

How do votes interact with policies?

Often, policies stem from questions about policies. That is, a question will ask how/whether something should be done and answers will give differing, well, answers to that question. The highest-scoring answer is likely to be considered the "policy" answer, as it is the one with the most (Meta) community consensus.

How are contentious policies handled?

Policies can be revisited after they are made (I at least believe that they should be as otherwise it would be tradition for tradition's sake and current policies wouldn't reflect the current state of the site). That said, how often policies can be revisited is not something I have seen answered anywhere.

Note that contending with a policy does not change the fact that it is the policy and that it must be followed.

Is a majority needed to implement a policy, is consensus needed, or something else?

The highest-scoring answer to a question about a policy is the one that is the most agreed upon by the (Meta) community (or at least something similar to being the most agreed upon answer). Thus this is the answer that is, for lack of a better word, "promoted" into being a policy.

Are moderators be allowed to overrule policies?

Well, I'm not a moderator, but moderators are site users just like everybody else and they (as far as I'm aware) cannot assume any sort of dictatorial or "because I said so" sort of stance. They must follow policies just like regular site members.

What happens if a user does not follow a policy?

Ideally, they would have the current policy explained to them and would learn from it moving forward by following the policy in the future. Whatever policy-defying action they took would almost certainly be undone but I certainly don't believe people should expect users (especially new users) to know the various policies of RPG.SE which are buried across numerous posts on an almost completely separate site.

Do policies get less valid with age?

I don't believe they get "less valid" but they certainly get less reliable in the sense that they reflect less the current state of the site. If a policy stood for 50 years one would certainly hope that the reasons the policy was ever implemented were still around and if they weren't still around, one would certainly hope that the policy be revisited as the times had changed.

How long do policies last for?

There is not set time that I am aware of. Policies are changed by being revisited, so without a revisit I suppose they would last indefinitely (unless of course the policy came with an expiration date, which I have never seen happen).

How are contradictory or conflicting policies handled?

These should not ever exist. If two policies contradict one another this is a fundamental problem that should be pointed out and addressed quickly enough that the contradiction has little to no effect on the sites.

Can a more specific policy overrule part of a less specific policy?

Without a specific example this is probably unanswerable. However, as far as I'm aware, policies can do whatever they want (while avoiding contradictions); after all, it's just an agreed upon set of rules.

When are policies revisited?

I don't know. There is probably an entire separate Meta discussion buried in here that I don't want to hash out.

Does revisiting a policy invalidate the original?

The answers and votes and comments and time that users spent on the original question are still noteworthy, valuable, and available; so it isn't invalidated in that sense. However, yes, the entire point of revisiting a policy is to either change or maintain the then-current policy (you could call this "invalidating" it).

How should users determine what a policy is?

Generally if a question is asking about how something should be done or whether something should be done; the highest-scoring answer is going to be the current policy. That doesn't mean every Meta Q&A is about policies (we probably have very very few actually policies at all), and it is only the case generally. Recently, the moderators have gone and added little sections of text to the end of some policy questions describing what the current policy actually is in case it would/could otherwise be unclear.

Do policies need to be followed all the time, or just some times?

The entire point of a policy is that it is always followed by everybody. However, context, context, context: It matters and shapes our ideas around things because we know a policy can't be perfect and account for every possible future event, I mean, we can't even accurately imagine every possible future event so we have no chance of accounting for them all anyway. We just do our best here and we know situations and events can occur where a "policy" gets... complicated.

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I at least do not want a rigidly-defined process

To me, having a rigidly defined method of creating and establishing policies (such as through implementing a set time after which the highest-scoring answer is promoted into a policy) gives easy ways to track down errors, loopholes, and ways to abuse or cheat the system.

A quote that summaries much of how I feel about the "policies" here:

[...] I wish the word "policy" weren't getting slung around so much. Like it or not, we don't really have policies nearly as much as we have practices. There are very few things around here that anyone--editor, voter, moderator, employee--is going to say is so clear that "yes, this will be applied in all situations, no consideration given, no context needed."

We aren't a legal system, we aren't a rigidly defined system of checks and balances. We're people trying their best, and we know that a rule can always have an exception. You simply cannot see the future.

Answer 2

There is no agreement on many of these topics

The thing that has struck me is that there is very little agreement on fundamental things like "what is a policy", "what determines if a policy is valid", or "how does revisiting a policy work". I have received many different opinions, very close to 1 per person.

I suspect that even of "meta" had 100% agreement (which it is nowhere near close to) that still leaves the vast majority of users that policies affect in anarchy. I think this is a substantial issue since policies affect these users.

I'm just writing here the answers I gather from other people as I go; I know there isn't much established knowledge on this topic, so everything is a bit random. I have heard many conflicting opinions on how things run, I'm noting them down here as that indicates further discussion is needed. Medix's post is great but it's still just 1 person's opinion - I have added their points to this post too.

Is there any kind of official guidelines that govern policies?

No, and the idea of "policy" isn't exactly agreed upon either - some users have suggested alternate times for the concept to reduce confusion, eg "practice".

What determines if a policy is valid or not?

Policies are valid so long as another policy hasn't invalidated them and they previously achieved "consensus" - I have heard several opinions as to what "consensus" means, I'll discuss them in the next point.

Old policies are still valid, they just may have lost a bit of their context. Whether or not these hap-hazardous policies need to be followed is a point of debate in the community.

How do votes interact with policies?

A question is posted, and people post their suggested policies as answers; after a voting period, the highest-voted answer is "the policy". There is no set "voting period", so it's on a case-by-case basis. After that, voting may change, so the highest-voted answer may not be the actual policy, as it may have been voted up after that voting period ended.

Generally it is held that the top answer is valid if it has some amount of margin, but that margin is hotly debated. Here are some opinions I have heard:

1. Simple majority is enough, even if it's only by 1 vote.
2. A substantial majority, 1 vote isn't enough, but a good lead of 5 or 10 votes is plenty (note that most policies only get around 20 votes at most, so this is a 25-50% lead).
3. Unanimity, most of the meta community need to be in agreement, alternate answers should have far fewer votes (although no guidelines as to what this means exactly, it should be >50%).

Keep in mind that often people suggest very similar policies, so the top 3 answers may have similar levels of votes, even the same number of votes. However if these are all basically the same policy, then that is good enough. In this case first answer is usually picked as the policy.

However, this is not universally agreed on. Some users say that the top post is "the policy" regardless of the "voting period" - the history doesn't matter, only the current top answer does.

How are contentious policies handled?

Newer policies overrule older policies, even if the older policy was more specific. If people disagree with the policy, they can post a thread to revisit it.

Are moderators be allowed to overrule policies?

No. Sometimes it may appear that a moderator is overruling a policy because they are stating the opposite of the top post(s); but they are actually just restating the policy as it was at the end of the voting period. Mods aren't supposed to overrule policies.

What happens if a user does not follow a policy?

It seems like this issue is not well known, there are a lot of different opinions as to what happens.

1. Nothing directly, but other users may downvote/vote to delete a user's posts if they are not following the policy. This can lead to the system automatically banning the user for a short time (called a suspension).

2. An alternate theory is that the system won't ban you; it will just stop you from asking questions, and this only happens if your questions are getting downvoted - there's no penalty for not following policies with regard to answers.

3. Some users have said that this is not correct, moderators can and do ban users directly for not following policies.

Additionally, Moderators can also enforce their stance on policies by deleting comments/answers and applying greater penalties as they see fit - there aren't guides on this; it is up to the moderator's judgement.

Do policies get less valid with age?

No, but they can be overruled, and since the votes on the answers can change that means the policy can look like it's saying the opposite of what it really says. They also become less reliable in that the site may have changed significantly since the policy's inception. If you follow the school of thought of "policies should be applied only if it makes sense in context", then older policies probably apply less often.

This thinking doesn't exist in the "everyone must always follow policies" model.

How are contradictory or conflicting policies handled?

The newer policy is the right one. When conflicting policies exist this can lead to one or both policies being revisited.

One point to be clear about is that if a policy is revisited and the thread is either inconclusive or to retain the policy, that invalidates all policies that may otherwise have overruled it.

For example in 2015 policy A is made. Then in 2016 policy B is made which overrules A. In 2017 there is a thread to revisit policy A. If this re-visitation is inconclusive or to reaffirm policy A, then that would overrule policy B.

Some users interpret inconclusive votes to mean that the policy is abolished.

Can a more specific policy overrule part of a less specific policy?

Newer policies overrule older ones. Specific or general doesn't matter.

When are policies revisited?

Any user can start a re-visitation of a policy.

Does revisiting a policy invalidate the original?

There are two schools of thought:

1. Revisiting the policy invalidates the later regardless of the outcome
2. Revisiting the policy only invalidates the later if the outcome is to overthrow it

Revisiting policies can lead to either reaffiriming the previous policy, introducing a new policy, abolishing the policy, or a moderators could deem it "too contentious" - this is at moderator discretion; as far as I know, there are no guidelines like "it needs 20% more votes to pass", etc.

How should users determine what a policy is?

There is no way for users to do this besides asking around and seeing what people say. However, recently some policies have been moved to Q&A posts, which overrule all policy discussion threads and correctly list the policy. Checking Q&A seems to be, at this time, the only reliable way to determine what a policy is.

Do policies need to be followed all the time, or just some times?

There seem to be 2 schools of thought on this:

1. Policies should be followed in all situations, no consideration given, no context needed.
2. Always follow policies all the time - but keep in mind the context is important; policies are not perfect and cannot predict every situation.
3. Policies are more like practices. How the policy fits the situation is more important than dogmatically following the policy.

From a pragmatic point of view, the downside of not following a policy is the downvotes and potential deletion. It is not unheard of for even a popular and high rep user to be banned due to this (although it is unclear if it was automatic or by mods).

This site only considers fraudulent votes to be serial upvoting/downvoting, so voting based on policy is ok here.