On 5 December 2011 22:08, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
<snip>
I can quite see why people do think Wikipedia "Byzantine", which is the
basic message of what we are talking about. Probably trainee medics curse
the immune system as unreasonably complicated. The metaphor doesn't seem
to
me either too defensive or too stretched. I think
we should bear in mind
that more and better written "manual pages" would only work better if
people had the basic humility to read instructions, at least in the
context
of complex systems they don't understand.
Charles
You're making the argument that some complex systems (bureaucracy) are
necessary and intrinsic to the success of the project. I think most
people would agree. People are not challenging the existence of any
bureaucracy; they're saying there is too much, that it's too difficult
for the average person, and that we hallow bureaucracy and its mastery
above more important considerations.
"Bureaucracy" may have a neutral meaning, but most people take it as a
pejorative for "complex system of administration". They assume the literary
models that spring to mind (the Circumlocution Office in "Little Dorrit",
Kafka, Catch-22). They assume also analogies with complaints procedures or
form-filling applications that we all meet from time to time.
The fairest comparison in the case in hand is the Circumlocution Office.
I'm saying it's not too fair: there is a dedicated forum for "deletion
review", and it isn't impossibly hard to navigate to it. Compared to being
able to ask the deleting admin to think again, it is bureaucratic, and
possibly process-bound. But it is also more likely to get to the real point
of such requests, I think: outcomes that are better documented. We could
tweak this or any other aspect of the system as a whole, but as of right
now I don't see any proposals to fold separate pages into a more
centralised place.
Charles