Wikipedia:Publicising discussions
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
Some discussions, and most straw polls and votes on Wikipedia, need to be publicised widely in order to gain consensus for wide-ranging or fundamental changes. This page is a list of suggestions for places where such publicising should take place. It generally only applies to the largest and most structured discussions.
Most discussions will only use a few of the publicity methods shown. Normal discussions do not always need large amounts of input. A balance needs to be struck between gaining sufficient input for consensus, and overwhelming a discussion with too much input. Similarly, publicising minor discussions makes it more difficult for editors to identify the major discussions where their comments are more important. If discussion at a quiet talk page has just attracted no or very little input, then leaving a neutral note on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject or inviting users who commented in previous discussions on the page (but see WP:CANVASS) is normally the best first step.
Places to publicise
edit- General places
- Village pumps (including proposals and policy village pumps)
- The Community portal and the Community bulletin board
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment (including Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies)
- Mailing lists specific to Wikipedia, such as Wiki-en-l
- Wikipedia:Third opinion, where two editors alone are in disagreement and a third opinion may help.
- Places for topical issues
- Various noticeboards; for example
- The talk page of the relevant policies and guidelines
- The talk pages of relevant WikiProjects
- Talk pages of affected processes, e.g. WT:AFD or WT:RFAR
- Mailing lists specific to a particular process on Wikipedia, such as unblock-en-l, accounts-enwiki-l, and oversight-l
- Places for technical issues
While many technical issues will require a bug report, that is generally not the place to publicise discussion.
- Discussions affecting the whole community
- Wikipedia:Centralized discussion for centralized discussion of policy, guideline, and infrastructure changes (not for content disputes in articles)
- Watchlist notice (propose additions at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages – this is only for the biggest discussions – see also Template:MW notices)
- Other places
- Community news media, such as the Signpost, Wikipedia:Wikivoices, Wikipedia:WikipediaWeekly, and Wikipedia:Wikizine
- Note: To suggest a story for the Signpost, post on the suggestions page. Posting about both ongoing and completed discussion are welcome.