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

[Stephen Bain]

On 11/18/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> The Manual of Style is mandatory but is being overturned in once off cases as though it was purely a matter for local decision, not Wikipedia-wide policy. Instead of debating policy, this 'once off' page by page policy making is producing a mess. Efforts to point out the difference between mandatory and optional usually produces a 'no. We'll vote here on what rules to follow on this page' response, with those pointing out mandatory rules accused of 'highjacking' pages!

I pointed this out earlier, and so did Kelly Martin, but I think it
needs pointing out again:

WP:NC is marked "official policy", which means that it is one of the
"policies that are widely accepted and that everyone is expected to
follow".

Each of the individual naming conventions, such as [[Wikipedia:Naming
conventions (common names)]], are not official policies. They are
clearly marked as "guidelines", which means they are "less rigid rules
of thumb that are generally accepted by consensus to apply in many
cases".

So it is mandatory to consider the naming conventions, since the WP:NC
page is official policy. However, it is not mandatory to actually
implement each of the conventions, since they are merely guidelines.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com