T P wrote:
I think many people fail to realize that Wikipedia is
and always will be a
work-in-progress. We really don't know what our notability policy is, and
there are no easy answers. Stan Shebs was quite right when he pointed out
that there are no known solutions to this problem.
That being the case editors and admins should stop pretending that there
is a solution.
This is kind of related to the whole "Wikipedia is
Failing" controversy, in
that so many people have such different ideas of what Wikipedia should be,
and a lot of them conclude that Wikipedia doesn't measure up.
That conclusion is not the only possible one to derive from your
premise. People do indeed have different ideas of what Wikipedia should
be, and some of us would conclude that that is a good thing. "Measuring
up" implies having predetermined notions about what would be a standard
for success. The standards for a collaborative environment have yet to
be defined. Applying the old hierarchical standards contradicts the
collaborative model Wikipedia fails when it closes off avenues to
innovation and collaboration.
Keeping those avenues open is scary business because it means accepting
that a technique that you were long convinced was the only solution may
suddenly be found wrong. Validation does not come in the form of the
immediate intangible reward of having your idea accepted and written in
stone. In a truly collaborative environment every policy or idea is
permanently open to change. It doesn't matter that at some point there
was a vote to adopt a policy. If someone disagrees at any time in the
future he should have the right to add his negative vote, or change his
previous vote. If enough people do that the policy could be reversed.
"Ignore All Rules" was never meant as a convenient drop-dead tool for
excusing misbehaviour. The notion should precede the action rather than
follow it. It requires that one has carefully considered the relevant
rule and found it wanting.
People think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, but
that's just an
analogy. The truth is Wikipedia is something new and different and what it
is is a matter of negotiation within the Wikipedia community.
I don't think that this line of reasoning gets us anywhere. It just
gets us into a lot of semantic debate about the nature of an
encyclopedia, a debate for which there is no firm answer. This debate
was largely superceded with the founding of the sister projects as
spin-offs for ideas that did not really fit into the definition of an
encyclopedia. What is new and different then is Wikimedia.
I wouldn't worry about Wikipedia failing to live up
to your expectations or
someone else's expectations. Wikipedia is what it is. The fact that it is
useful enough to be in the top ten websites is success enough.
Absolutely. Expectations come from a What-do-the-neighbours-think? kind
of mentality. We want accuracy and reliability, but on our own terms,
not on terms which we imagine have been set by others. If our
neighbours complain that we are being unreliable about some specified
issue we will examine it and change it as circumstances require;
sometimes we will find no need to change it at all. We should never be
panicked into action by vague general claims of unreliability, though I
fear that some editors feel flea-bitten by such repetitive comments.
Ec