Zitat von Wikipedia - Power Structure (Wikimedia)
Democracy
Not all conflicts can be resolved through consensus, and in many cases, simple votes are organized using only the wikipages as a tool. Virtually all existing voting methods have been tried and used, and no standard has been agreed upon yet.
In March 2003, with Wales' approval, User:Eloquence organized the first official project-wide vote on a Wikipedia policy, on the subject of which articles to include in the Wikipedia total article count (see Article count reform). The voting method used was average voting. The result was accepted, and more official votes on contentious subjects may follow.
Basically, whenever you feel like it, you can try to start a vote on a talk page, but people will probably not participate in it if they think discussion has not yet been exhausted as a way to resolve conflicts of opinion. In general Wikipedia follows a deliberative democracy model, where nothing is in a hurry... it could evolve towards consensus democracy if the will is there.
While Jimbo remains skeptical of voting, he has suggested that he is more willing to accept votes on the non-English Wikipedias, where he is less able to oversee the decision making process. It is most likely there that new structures will emerge.
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