[WikiEN-l] The Cat Cat

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

<snip>

>> Category types. Marked as failed, but someone could try and revive it again.
>
> Huh.  A quick skim of the talk page suggests a fair amount of
> strong support, and a fair amount of what I would characterize as
> weak objection, basically along the lines of "categories are fine
> for dabbling and browsing, and I don't want to think about trying
> to do anything more with them, or letting anyone else try to do
> anything more with them."  Too bad.

I've often thought that trawling through rejected proposals would
actually throw up some ideas that now look quite attractive, or are
technically feasible, or where consensus may have changed. The other
rationale for actually making "rejected proposals" and other
backwaters of the wiki more organised and accessible (currently, you
have to search and hope you find anything similar to your idea), is
that it avoids reinventions of the same ideas, and repeating the same
arguments.

But you have to be careful not to spend too much time looking back,
and enough time moving forward. It is similar to the point Charles is
making about deleted revisions in another thread. The difference there
is that deleted revisions can be actively harmful, but rejected
proposals are rarely that toxic (apart from for the person who
unwittingly revives the one that causes the wiki to implode).

Carcharoth