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Use real headers instead of fake headers just went from to without apparent discussion about the change, and Can I send private messages to users? became an . I thought there'd be conversation involved first, so the lack of it is surprising for me.

What's the actual process around FAQ proposals? How do we provide input on whether they should or shouldn't become FAQ items? (And what decides whether a proposal becomes FAQ?)

In particular, where are we supposed to talk about it? In comments on the question itself, or in a new question?

Given an FAQ item has been made with apparently no discussion — how and where do we talk about items that have become FAQ already, to re-evaluate whether they belong in our , if necessary?

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There is no formal process.

Something gets put on meta and if someone thinks it'd possibly be meaningful enough to be in the FAQ, it gets tagged with [faq-proposal] either at first or later on via normal Marquess of Queensbury editing rules.

Votes and/or discussion happen. When the mods are satisfied that it's now a [faq], we make it a [faq] by changing the tag.

The first question you cite, the headers question, has 51 upvotes and has been there for a couple weeks. Any meaningful discussion would have already happened; there's been no anti sentiment except a caveat of "be careful with h1's." That makes it clearly and overwhelmingly pass in our minds (51! That's just about unprecedented on Meta. I don't know why so many people care about formatting either, but eh.).

The PM one has been tagged faq-proposal as well, because people ask that question all the time. If you want to talk about it, yes indeed, do it on that question, in answers and comments and whatnot.

We don't make separate questions to declare the FAQ-worthiness of a question that is proposed to be a FAQ, that just adds confusion. "Here's a FAQ proposal!" "Let us have a proposal about the proposal!" This isn't HP or IBM, it's a community site... [faq-proposal] means "this is a FAQ proposal, please discuss its content and its FAQ-quiness." FAQquiness is not usually much of a debate, it's really a matter of "is this question asked a lot?" (The PM one sure is), as in, you know, is it a frequently asked question, or is it normative guidance we think everyone should read even if you didn't know to ask it, like something about headers or comment use or whatnot. There's not a tag for "official declarations!" other than [faq], so we use that for those too (I venture to say that's common in FAQs of the world).

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I appreciate the clarification. "this is a FAQ proposal, please discuss its content and its FAQ-quiness." -- Sure, but on the question itself (when the comments might also have to deal with that question) seemed an odd and disruptive place to do that, and I wasn't sure what to do. I'm not, myself, aware of the headings thing being F.A. about enough to be an F.A.Q., so much as just a phenomenally supported notion that people can star and refer to if they feel the need. It is a pretty solid question though, and the PM thing definitely comes up often so I've got no issue with that being FAQ. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 9, 2016 at 12:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ Oh, now I see your bit about official declarations. I guess that's a weird way to use it, but also that it doesn't get much more official than unprecedented levels of meta voting support. \$\endgroup\$
    – doppelgreener
    Sep 9, 2016 at 13:03
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    \$\begingroup\$ Another point worth mentioning is that a [faq] tag is easily reversed, so it's fixable if it turns out there were problems or objections that came up afterwards. \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie
    Sep 9, 2016 at 14:18

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