[WikiEN-l] need to work out clear policies on MANDATORY and OPTIONAL rules on WP

[Tom Cadden]

I've been looking at some pages and noticed that there is a haphazard application of rules on WP, specifically a failure to distinguish between mandatory and optional rules. 
 
 (a). The APPLICATION of 'mandatory' rules in INDIVIDUAL PAGES should never be a subject for a vote. 
 
 (b). The ADOPTION of a 'mandatory' rule for Wikipedia en block should be on POLICY PAGES.
 
 3. The APPLICATION  and ADOPTION of 'optional' rules in INDIVIDUAL CASES and on POLICY PAGES should be capable of being voted on. 
 
 I've come across a couple of pages tonight where notes decided that in some articles mandatory rules shouldn't be applied (usually on naming). So you find that 99 articles may follow one naming system, and one doesn't even though the MoS says it has to, because users on a page decided not to. 
 
 WP needs to spell out clearly the difference in weighing between different types of rules, and so let everyone know what is a 'must' and what is a 'may'.
 
 A classic example is one vote where over twenty users have voted to put a page at the location that is contrary to MoS policy. Arguments ranged from 
 
 * well I like that name
 * well I always use it
 * I personally haven't heard any other name used
 * the Government wants it
 * it will eventually become widespread
 * I hope it eventually becomes widespread
 * I think it will eventually become widespread
 * we should be encourging it to become widespread
 * I think the old name is colonial 
 and a lot of others. 
 
 None of those are criteria recognised in the Manual of Style, which sets the simple criteria 'the most common name used in English', not 'the most common name likely to be used in the future', 'the name we would like to use', or 'the name the government tells us to use' but simply the most common name in use as of now. 
 
 Yet by using criteria that clash with a mandatory rule, a page is put in a different location to hundreds of thousands of others. 
 
 One second issue: if we require 'most commonly used name in English' (or in whatever language in another Wikipedia) we need to be able to define an independent, verifiable, objective methodology for establishing what is the most commonly used name in English. A whole host of pages tonight had debates based on the 'well that's how I know him/her/it as' with no form of verification. Straight google searches are worthless because they link to accurate sites and inaccurate ones and other language sites still crop up in English searches if linked to English sites. (An example: last year someone put a dummy page on WP. I deleted it. It was complete fiction. But by then that page had been copied under licence. Now there are over eighty sites on the net that refer to a fact that someone completely made up on WP. The topic is an area i know a lot about. One read of it showed that it was a joke, not real, done obviously by someone who knew a lot about the topic and wanted to see if they could
 'create' a 'fact' that didn't exist.) 
 
 We need a clearly defined criteria for sources for establishing 'most common name': 
 
 Media is key to finding 'most common name' because as they need to communicate to millions they will tend to use terminology they know their listeners/viewers will understand. 
 
 Obvious sources are
 * media usage in the large English-speaking countries on EACH continent
 * Broadcast usage and print usage
 * academic usage 
 * hardcopy published usage
 * informal governmental usage
 
 In terms of media, for example, that would mean checking BBC, New York Times, The Australian, Reuters, APTV, ITN (the real one, not ours!), South African television and print usage, Canadian tv and print usage, Indian TV and print usage, informal governmental usage in speeches, etc. 
 
 Formal-legal and diplomatic terminology in contrast is not guaranteed to be mass used (indeed rarely is. How many people say French Republic for France or Poblacht na hÉireann for Ireland in real life?) and so may not help us find 'most common name'. 
 
 If we don't sort out the mandatory from optional rules, and restrict votes to decision making on the latter, and Wikipedia-wide policy making on the former, then it will cause all sorts of problems as Wikipedia becomes larger. In every encyclopædia for practical organisational purposes the Manual of Style is a mandatory requirement which no editor can breach. (If they try they get the sack.) It is bad enough finding a handful of pages that are the odd ones out and are in effect 'Manual of Style'-free zones. But the more there are, the more people can then say 'well if THEY can ignore the MoS on THEIR page, why can't WE? A professional credible encyclopædia cannot be organised on the basis of everyone on each page making up their own rules. We created the Manual of Style and put enormous work into creating Naming Conventions directly to avoid such confusion and ensure maximum cross-article standards of clarity and comparibility. 
 
 Thom


		
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