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You should add the following to the FAQ page as I have not found an answer there. If it is already there somewhere I apologize in advance for the oversight.

How are decisions made here?

Is there anyone who can overrule a community decision?

19
  • Mostly democratic, but when the community does something stupid it's a good thing to have someone that can overrule it.
    – Undo
    May 25, 2015 at 20:53
  • 1
    And who would that be?
    – Prathyush
    May 25, 2015 at 20:53
  • 3
  • 1
    The community steers itself. Most things needs multiple members and all actions can be reversed if enough members disagree. If a dispute can't be settled among the members of the community a moderator can step in (who is part of a team of moderators) and if all fails the Community managers (those are SE employees) step in to guide the community to a viable solution.
    – rene
    May 25, 2015 at 21:00
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    And what if the bulk of the community disagrees with the community managers?
    – Prathyush
    May 25, 2015 at 21:02
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    They all go to quora.com?
    – rene
    May 25, 2015 at 21:03
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    Why is democracy considered the only way decisions are made when that isn't true in life?
    – random
    May 25, 2015 at 21:14
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    @random33 I never said democracy is the only way decision should be made, It is my preferred approach, in most situations. Screw democracy if it was choosing a mass genocide.
    – Prathyush
    May 25, 2015 at 21:17
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    @Undo how is "stupid" defined and by whom?
    – Dilaton
    May 25, 2015 at 21:40
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    Downvoters Please explain yourself
    – Prathyush
    May 26, 2015 at 13:12
  • 1
    No. We explain nothing.
    – user1228
    May 27, 2015 at 15:01
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    @dalton after you explain something literally thousands of times, and each and every one of those explanations are here waiting to be read, is it we who are rude for not explaining it one more time, or you for demanding it? Is it professional to blunder into a place and think everyone else should bend to your whims? Or would professionalism demand that one takes some minimum amount of time to try and learn the culture of your hosts? We don't ask for much, honestly.
    – user1228
    May 28, 2015 at 12:56
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    @Won't If you have spent explaining something a thousand times it should have been clearly written in the FAQ. Please don't expect some one who is coming to the site for the first time to search through old answers(Literally thousands of them here) to find the question he is interested in. I did not find it through a quick google search either. That is a sufficient reason to ask for an answer.
    – Prathyush
    May 28, 2015 at 15:04
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    Everything about SE is written on Meta. That's the point of Meta. It's a compilation of everything about SE. If you want to learn about some part, search all questions, not necessarily the faq. What isn't written is that this is a "democratic place". In order for you to ask this question ("is it not?") then it has to be established that it IS. You didn't do that. I can tell, because nowhere will you find any statement that the SE network is a "democratic place". So your question is based on the negation of an assumption. Perhaps that was not your intended question? Clarity helps.
    – user1228
    May 28, 2015 at 16:14
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    @Won't Yes, Clarity helps. If I wanted to change it, I would have asked "Should this be a democratic place?". My intention behind this question was simply to get a clear picture. Second point is, whatever you wish this place to be, make it clear in the FAQ. Perhaps I should have realized, It was not because it was not written, but that requires an additional assumption on my part. You have to concede that it is difficult to find a specific answer given that Q/A has ~70,000 questions. As, a new user to the meta, It is a natural question to ask when using the site for the first time.
    – Prathyush
    May 28, 2015 at 23:24

2 Answers 2

15

No. In the end, StackExchange is a company, so they need to make profit. They also know they need the community to achieve that. So there is a mutual dependency here: the community needs the company (for servers, support, etc) and the company needs the community.

The community has a lot of freedom when it comes to defining the boundaries of their own site. They can make 99% of the rules. But in the end, sometimes the company needs to make the decision. The glue between both worlds are the community managers.

They translate between the two worlds and help the community. They help to set up new sites and talk to the development team if a feature can be implemented.

13

There are several democratic elements that are fundamental to the way moderation works on SE sites. Moderators are elected, and many moderation actions can be performed by regular users with a certain amount of reputation.

The direction of a site and the rules are generally determined by the community. There are some general concepts and rules that apply network-wide, but almost all of them can be overriden by the community if they chose so. Stack Exchange has the last word in everything if they want to, they own the sites and can override any decision by the community. But that doesn't actually happen very often. There are a few cases I remember where they stepped in and just made decisions, but those were generally cases where the community was divided or hadn't developed a strong opinion yet.

There are some other aspects that are decidely non-democratic, the most important one is the software itself. Stack Exchange decides over the features of the sites, and that is one part where the input of the community is limited. Feedback from the community is often influential on how certain featues are implemented, but if SE feels strongly about anything they tend to be stubborn even if the community complains about a certain feature.

There is a more fundamental way in which SE sites are democratic, they only work as long as there is a healthy community. This limits the absolute power SE has to a certain extent, if they drive away the community the site will fail eventually. The Creative Commons licence is a strongly related feature, it allows anyone to create a new site and import the content of the SE site.

SE sites are not democratic, but the community still runs many parts of them and has considerable influence over the development of the site.

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