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Suppose I wanted to put forth a policy for discussion, refinement, some sort of decision process, and eventually formal adoption/rejection. Say... a policy to explicitly allow tool-recommendation questions.

How would I do that? How do the arguments for and against get voiced? Is there a vote?

I imagine the policy posed as a "question" here in meta. Would there be two "answers", containing the arguments for and against? As community wikis? Or is each interested user likely to post his or her own "answer"/position statement?

What are our best practices on proposing policy, hearing and considering reasoned arguments for and against, and making a final-until-the-next-proposal-comes-'round decision?

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    \$\begingroup\$ On the tool-rec thing, I'll be posting such an opportunity to create policy around that this weekend. I've been waiting for things to cool off and taking care of certain things including making sure the question's drafted well and will produce constructive responses. You can find out by example then. \$\endgroup\$ – doppelgreener♦ Oct 16 '15 at 1:37
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    \$\begingroup\$ @doppelgreener second the "let things cool off" instinct. Is your upcoming action something like a "call for proposals"? Happy to let my draft mull for a few more days--and re-work if necessary--if that's what's coming. \$\endgroup\$ – nitsua60♦ Oct 16 '15 at 1:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ Here's the chat room in which it's linked. \$\endgroup\$ – doppelgreener♦ Oct 16 '15 at 1:51
  • \$\begingroup\$ @doppelgreener fascinating--thanks. Do you think it makes sense for me to delete this question and then re-ask it after the upcoming tool-rec policy discussion; a summary of and link to that would serve as a good example-answer? \$\endgroup\$ – nitsua60♦ Oct 16 '15 at 2:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ @nitsua60 Nah, "example answers" are usually a poor addition to a question, because it implies the querent is only open to one kind of answer: this forces anyone with a differently shaped answer to start on the defensive and justify why their answer doesn't look like the example, instead of letting their answer's value speak for itself. \$\endgroup\$ – BESW Oct 16 '15 at 2:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ Is this a policy question about making a policy for how to make policy? google.com/search?q=recursion \$\endgroup\$ – DuckTapeAl Oct 16 '15 at 22:11
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There isn't a formal process beyond just proposing it. Meta is the place for “users to communicate with each other about Role-playing Games Stack Exchange (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions)”.

Asking questions about policy, making proposals, participating in discussions of policy — that's how policy is made.

There are a lot of examples in the tag that can be studied, whether for what makes a good answer on a policy discussion, or for how questions touching on policy can be framed for best effectiveness. A typical example is “Is trivia on-topic?”, which resulted in a “yes” outcome, but with well-articulated nuances that meaningfully advanced our collective understanding of why trivia questions sometimes do or don't work on the site and how to handle them in the future.

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