[Wikipedia-l] Re: Policy

[Toby Bartels]

The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>My understanding is that policy is to be decided (or defined if you will)
>>by discussion on talk pages and the mailing list (and in theory meta).
>>People have said as much here before without confrontation.
>>Once that has been done, the policy page should reflect the decision;
>>that much should be obvious.

>This is where you're wrong. In general, policy is decided by editing the
>policy pages. If there's contention, then it moves to the talk pages.
>Only in the rare case where this is somehow "dangerous" (because the
>policy has sweeping and immediate consequence) or the process breaks
>down horribly does it need to go to the mailing list.

I don't know about "is" decided.  I've only noticed you doing this;
others at least mention the edit in the policy page's talk page,
thus explicitly inviting discussion.

>This is how it's worked historically, and how it should work in the
>future. The alternative is entirely too hierarchical and bureaucratic.

I don't see what's hierarchical about the mailing list, much less talk pages.
I do agree that discussing every policy change is bureaucratic,
but that's because I forgot to mention that most policy changes
are the implicit kind, changed because of a change in actual practice.
But these are the policies that are rarely written down;
we discuss policy that's written up on pages, these days.

>In general, policy pages benefit from direct editing in the same way as
>article pages do; where the cumulative edits on articles influence them
>towards comprehensiveness and objectivity, the cumulative edits on the
>policy pages influence them toward robustness and fairness.

The problem is that policy pages will be inaccurate
if they are changed to what policy should be but is not.
(Unless you think that policy is defined to be whatever's on the page,
an unlikely position if a vandal replaces the text with "This is stupid.".)
OTOH, policy proposals can be edited in the wiki way on talk pages
(which is the best place for it; I don't like the mailing list format either).
While I've only noticed you edit major policy pages without discussion,
I've noticed several occasions where text was edited on a talk page
before being incorporated into the policy page itself,
so that agreement could be established for the new text
before it appeared on the page.

This is an encyclopaedia; we strive for accuracy ^_^.


-- Toby