[Foundation-l] Policies expanding out of control - Wikimedia-l

5 Dec 2004

I am really concerned that the number and extent of policies on en
Wikipedia is getting seriously out of hand. It's true that some policy
needs are necessary, but I feel like it's getting to the point where
you must have memorized hundreds of pages, spanning hundreds of
kilobytes of text, just to be able to edit within the "rules". Unless
you're spending most of your waking moments on Wikipedia, and keeping
up with all the new rules and decisions, you're unlikely to keep up
with all this. This is especially hard on admins who are the targets
of disruptive users. I am not saying that there shouldn't be
accountability, but all these rules is making the whole editing
process a whole lot less fun than it used to be. I am already feeling
like I should stop being an admin, and if the policy explosion extends
much further into the normal editing, I'd probably stop editing
altogether. Common sense seems to be going out the window.

It used to be that we had mostly guidelines, but at some point
guidelines seems to have moved into policy, and users are using these
to clobber each other left and right. I think this is a looming threat
to Wikipedia. The bureacracy level is increasing every day. I don't
think that the benefits of the increased bureacracy outweigh the added
complexity. Obviously Wikipedia is a lot bigger than it used to be,
but I think the medicine might turn into a new disease.

-- 
[[en:User:Dori]]