User blog comment:Mr Creeper500/Democracy or Oligarchy?/@comment-5558012-20160525204905

Neither is more right than the other; one method is sure to not work on one wiki as opposed to the other. While being completely democratic can be nice, do new users with little experience with the wiki deserve the same weight as the wiki's senior editors when it comes to a vote? Does a group of three users know the best route for the wiki to take when there are dozens of active, experienced users? Does one method really result in better decisions than the other (I've seen this with some wikis that voted to enable article comments only for that choice to be a disaster that forced good Admins to leave)?

The main wiki I'm apart of isn't a very small wiki or a very large one. We operate somewhere in the middle. Five of the most active and constructive users (not necessarily Admins) make up a council which votes on all matters. Members are added and removed by that council (inactive users are removed when necessary). Issues such as policy or major design/feature changes are first open to discussion by all community members that decide to comment (comments are generally implemented into the discussed change). User rights decisions are not (though input from the community would be taken into consideration, if there was any). After the community has added input, the council makes the final vote over a two week period. All discussions are conducted in the open and are archived for the community to view. Over the years I've been active (more than three now), I've never seen people complain about the system or anyone abuse it. Of course, this wouldn't work everywhere, as initially noted.