On Wookieepedia, consensus determines site-wide policy and procedure, as established by the Wookieepedia community. All Wookieepedians are required to adhere to consensus rulings. Attempts by any individual to violate or counteract consensus without community support will be considered vandalism/disruption and may be met with administrative sanction. Wookieepedians are encouraged to participate in consensus forums and express the reasonings behind their logic, rather than disrupting the site to prove a point.
Consensus is achieved through certain community votes designed to determine a set course of action for the entirety of Wookieepedia. Only eligible Wookieepedians may contribute a vote in these forums. The following voting measures are subject to Wookieepedia consensus rules:
In order to overturn a previous consensus resolution made within two years, a renewed vote must be held with a voter participation equal to or greater than the original discussion. Note that this voter-participation requirement does not apply to modifications of a previous resolution, which is defined as any change to an existing policy that is not a straight repeal.
For consensus to be achieved, a minimum of ten eligible Wookieepedians must contribute a vote on a given forum. The following voting ratios must be satisfied to achieve consensus:
- Forums with 10-16 votes require a 3:1 ratio
- Forums with 17-22 votes require a 5:2 ratio
- Forums with 23 or more votes require a 2:1 ratio
Two weeks (336 hours) is provided as the standard time frame for a consensus vote, although a forum may be closed early in the instance that a clear consensus is achieved:
- : A vote may be closed after seven days (168 hours) if support for one option achieves the voting ratio 9:1
- : A vote may be closed after five days (120 hours) if one option achieves 20-0 support
A consensus vote may be closed as no consensus if the vote has been open for two weeks, its forum has not been edited by a vote-eligible Wookieepedian for at least five days, and it has yet to achieve consensus. This indicates that a community agreement has not been reached. At this point, an administrator may close the forum and recommend that the issue be discussed in the Senate Hall to gather further input.
For forums with multiple votes, each individual section or vote may be closed independently of other ongoing votes within the same forum.
All consensus forums must be closed by a Wookieepedia administrator after it has been open for at least fourteen days (336 hours). Once a forum has been closed and its result has been determined, an administrator is responsible for executing any new site changes and reflecting the result of the initiative on Wookieepedia's policy and consensus updates page. When closing a forum, administrators should refer to the ratios chart presented in the administrators' how-to guide to determine whether consensus has been reached.
Once a proposal is offered in a consensus forum, it must remain unchanged following the commencement of voting, unless:
Exceptions to this include minor wording or punctuation changes that do not alter the intended approved meaning of the vote but are done for clarity when incorporating them onto policy pages.
Consensus votes to determine an article's main infobox image shall be decided by simple majority vote, or plurality vote. As defined above, these votes are still subject to the ten-voter minimum requirement in order to achieve consensus. In the case of a tied vote, the article should display the image revision in place prior to the disagreement that commenced the vote.
Once consensus is reached on a given infobox image, that image shall remain the article's main infobox image for a minimum of six months. This means that a renewed vote to change the infobox image may not take place for six months post-consensus unless a brand-new image has been released in official source material. In this circumstance, a brand-new image may replace the consensus infobox image without the need for a renewed vote if there is no contention to the change, which will effectively render the original consensus decision moot.
Renewed votes to change an article's infobox image that was previously approved through consensus are not subject to this policy's voter-participation clause, as defined above.