Brock Batsell wrote:
I attempted to make it clear that Wikipedia has
guidelines and
policies that must be followed by all of its editors, so that clutter
and cruft can be eliminated and we can get to work on writing an
encyclopedia.
The error here is in thinking that guidelines *must* be followed.
Guidelines *should* be followed, but there should be no penalty when
just trying something different. It may even be a better idea.. As for
"clutter" and "cruft", we all know that there is no single opinion
about
what qualifies as such.
I also encouraged him to bring up his problems with
those policies
and guidelines on the respective talk pages in order to effect change
in Wikipedia.
So then he makes his comments on the article's talk page, and after a
week there's no response at all. Can we blame him for believing that
silence is consent.
Now I (and he) see a longtime administrator and
respected editor
making a liar out of me, completely ignoring the processes that
volunteers long before I arrived worked to hammer out in order to
make this encyclopedia the best it can be.
To have an effective wiki there must be reasonable avenues for
questioning those early process decisions. Except for a handful of key
principles all decisions and processes should be open for
reconsideration. This includes many that probably never will be
questioned. The handful that are beyond question can probably be put on
one screen without ever needing to scroll.
For the record, I completely agree that this article
should not have
been deleted, as do most people on this list. But your complete
disregard for anyone with a differing opinion is astonishing. How
much effort did explaining this undeletion and enforcing it require
with regard to its reward (one article is undeleted that should not
have been deleted)? Wouldn't this time have been better spent
advocating a change in the written policy that led to its deletion,
so that your work can benefit thousands of similar articles?
Some people feel that it's a more valuable use of time to be working to
improve our encyclopedia than to engage in endless wrangling over
policy detailsa.
The user I worked with had very strong views that he
had thought out
quite well, although they were contrary to policy. He used his
noggin just fine. Unfortunately, just using your noggin and ignoring
the noggins of other people (otherwise known as consensus) is not how
Wikipedia was built, and it's not how it will be built in the
future. You know that as well as I do.
For consensus to be meaningful his ideas need a fair hearing. That
means that there needs to be some attempt at finding some way to
accomodate the new views that he is introducing. If that cannot be done
the pre-existing consensus is no longer a consensus.
Ec