[WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia and the poison of procedural literalism

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Wily D <wilydoppelganger at gmail.com> wrote:
>  The problem, Greg, is that policies on English Wikipedia are almost
>  uniformly horribly vague, and so if you have to figure out what they
[snip]
>  Policies are often enforced with the same kind of literalist mindset
>  ... so it makes sense to evaluate proposals that way.

Certantiantly vagueness can cause problems... so it's in everyone's
interest to avoid vagueness, policy proposers, supporters, opposers,
and neutralists alike.  If people can come to an agreement on a
meaning then establishing a non-vague expression may take some effort,
but it's mostly an effort of copyediting not something deserving an
argument.

The issue I was trying to raise is that someone proposed a requirement
of "a number of Wikipedians" which was countered with "Zero is a
number" ... and If you're willing to take that literal an
interpretation no policy can avoid being vague or having significant
unintended consequences.